We are very proud to announce that eight thesis prizes have been awarded to our senior concentrators for their outstanding scholarly research.
The Hoopes Prize – funded by the estate of Thomas T. Hoopes, class of 1919, and overseen by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) – was awarded to Amen Gashaw, Fred Larsen, and Jaya Nayar, alongside 73 fellow Harvard undergraduate students.
The prize was established for the purpose of “promoting, improving, and enhancing the quality of education” as well as encouraging “excellence in the art of teaching”. As a result, student winners are awarded $5,000 and their faculty advisors are awarded $2,000. Each winning thesis is bound and available in Lamont Library for two years before being sent to the student.
Speaking to The Harvard Crimson, Susan L. Lively, secretary of the FAS, said: “The Hoopes Prize represents Harvard College at its very best. The range and quality of this year’s winning projects are a testament to the hard work and talent of both the students who produced the theses and the faculty who advised them”. Read the full article here.
Fred Larsen also went on to win the 2023–2024 Seymour E. and Ruth B. Harris Prize for Honors Thesis in the Social Sciences for his essay: “A Musical Politics”.
Seymour Harris was a Professor of Economics from 1946 to 1957 and the Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy from 1957 until his retirement in 1964. Through a bequest, the Seymour E. and Ruth B. Harris prizes are awarded to “two Harvard College seniors who write outstanding Honors Theses, one in Economics and the other in another Social Science”, with a prize payment of $3,500.
Three of our senior concentrators were recipients of the African and African American Studies (AAAS) department awards.
Nia Warren won the Kwame Anthony Appiah Prize for her paper, titled “SHE HAD TWO CHOICES: HOMELESSNESS OR HARASSMENT: An Intersectional Study of Underreporting of Sexual Harassment in Housing”.
Awarded to the most outstanding thesis relating to the African diaspora, the prize was established in 2005 by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Henry Finder and named after a distinguished colleague who served in the AAAS Department from 1991-2002.
Nia was also awarded the Kathryn Ann Huggins Prize alongside classmate Ebony Smith, whose paper “Consuming Chocolate and Blackness: Reparative Imagery to Address the Triple Oppression of Black Women in the Cocoa and Chocolate Industry” was highly praised.
Awarded to the most outstanding theses relating to African American life, history, or culture, the prize was established in 1987 by Kathryn Huggins’s brother, the late Professor Nathan I. Huggins, W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of History and Afro-American Studies. It aims to remember Kathryn by bringing attention to the values she held most dear: personal commitment and dedication to study, humanism through the study of other peoples and cultures, and respect for the marginalized and dispossessed.
The final AAAS Department award was won by Jolly Rop, with her essay on “The Politics of Tea & Robots in Western Kenya: Implications for Our Understanding of the Political Impact of Automation” earning the Philippe Wamba Prize for best senior thesis in African Studies.
A 1993 graduate of Harvard College, Philippe Wamba profoundly impacted his fellow students and the faculty of the African and African American Studies Department in his short life. Following his graduation, he soon returned to Harvard University where he became the Editor-in-Chief of Africana.com. Known for his remarkable personality as well as his outstanding intellectual capability, Philippe Wamba’s life is celebrated through this prize.
The final prize for the 2023-24 graduating class is from the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), which awarded senior concentrator Jorge Ruiz the James R. and Isabel D. Hammond Thesis Prize on Spanish-speaking Latin American Studies for his thesis, “Old Parties and New Cleavages: Puerto Rico’s Emerging Multi-Party System”. Read the full article here.
We’re very proud of Amen, Fred, Jaya, Nia, Ebony, Jolly, and Jorge for their hard work and dedication toward producing a fantastic senior thesis.