2026
Rita Sawaya
Ph.D. candidate and researcher in
the Department of
Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at
the University of Toronto
Awarded $5,000
Dissertation: The Maronite Chronicle (BL Add. MS 17,216): A Syriac Chronicle in a Composite Manuscript, Towards an Integral Study
Ms. Sawaya’s research focuses on Syriac historiography and chronicle traditions; Aramaic and Syriac language and literature; and Syriac manuscript culture and material philology. Her doctoral research examines the Maronite Chronicle, a fragmentarily preserved seventh-century Syriac chronicle, through an interdisciplinary approach that integrates philology, codicology, palaeography, manuscript materiality, and historical analysis. Their broader research interests include Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic Garshuni, and Christian Arabic studies; interreligious and intercultural relations in the premodern Near East; Near Eastern archaeology; sacred art and iconography; and digital approaches to manuscript studies, particularly digital epigraphy and handwritten text recognition.
2025
Emy Merin Joy
PhD Candidate and Researcher
Department of Theology and Religious Studies
Central European University (Vienna, Austria)
Awarded $5,000
Dissertation: The Paravur Dialogues: Introducing the First Inter-religious Dialogues from Early Modern Kerala
Ms. Joy’s research focuses on the historical, theological, and socio-cultural dimensions of Christian manuscripts written in Garshuni Malayalam and Syriac from early modern Kerala, examining their role in shaping religious identity, authority, and cross-cultural interactions among Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Hindus. I am particularly interested in interreligious dialogues, Jesuit missionary activities in South Asia, and the transmission of anti-Jewish polemics and European intellectual traditions to India. My work engages with vernacular church histories, translation studies, and the impact of Catholicism on Syriac Christian communities in the Indian context.
2024
Nicolas Atas
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Theology and Religious Studies
The Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium)
Awarded $5,000
Dissertation: A Christian Appeal for the Survival of Syriac in an Arabic Literary Context: The ‘Book of the Interpreter’ (Kitāb al-Tarjumān) of Elias of Nisibis (d. 1046)
Subdeacon Atas’s primary interest is the study of Syriac Christian history and culture. His Ph.D. research focuses on Elias of Nisibis and the historical and religious context of the redaction of the “Book of the Interpreter.”
2023
Giorgia Nicosia
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of History and Religious Sciences
Ghent Univerity (Belgium)
Awarded $5,000
Dissertation: This Story may provide Proof. History and Authority in Syriac Miaphysite Excerpt Collections
Ms. Nicosia’s research has focused on understudied topics, such as Syriac historiographical florilegia and prophecies about Christ attributed to pagan philosophers. Her dissertation focuses on Syriac historiographical excerpt collections composed between the 6th and the 10th century in Miaphysite milieus.
Andrew Tucker
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Theological Studies
St Louis University (USA)
Awarded $5,000
Dissertation: Isaac of Antioch’s Memre on Faith
Mr. Tucker studies late antique Syriac Christianity and, in particular, how ancient Christians used poetry to communicate their ideas. Mr. Tucker’s dissertation focuses on a set of untranslated metrical homilies On Faith attributed to Isaac of Antioch. The aim of his dissertation is to explore how Isaac used the poetic form of the metrical homily as a vehicle for communicating his theological ideas.