Adam Lerner, Alexander "Sasha" Philippov, Henry Shapiro and Neereja Sundaresan have been named the winners of the Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellowship, Princeton University's top honor for graduate students. The fellowships support their final year of study at Princeton and are awarded to one Ph.D. student in each of the four divisions (humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering) whose work has exhibited the highest scholarly excellence.
The Jacobus Fellows will be honored at Alumni Day ceremonies Saturday, Feb. 25, at Jadwin Gymnasium.
Shapiro, a doctoral student in history who came to Princeton in 2011, has a bachelor's degree in classics from Brown University, a Master of Divinity from the Harvard Divinity School and a master's in Ottoman and Turkish history from Sabancı University. Shapiro is writing a dissertation titled "The Great Armenian Flight: The Celali Revolts and the Rise of Western Armenian Society," which offers new insights about the timing, reasons and impact of Armenians' migration to the western territories of the Ottoman Empire.
Said Molly Greene, professor of history and Hellenic Studies and Shapiro's adviser: "Henry is a determined hunter of sources, and the source base for his work is astounding. … Henry has literally walked all over the areas of Anatolia discussed in his sources and has uncovered a material culture, such as abandoned monasteries, which he is using to reconstruct the history of the 17th century. … Henry is writing a history of the Armenians unlike anything that has been written to date."
After earning his Ph.D., Shapiro plans to become a professor at a research university. "I plan to present students a picture of the 'Islamic World,' which is far broader than that envisioned by most Americans, extending westward into the Balkans and eastward beyond Iran into Southeast Asia. Moreover, I have a vision of the Near East which incorporates the languages and histories of largely overlooked Christian societies," said Shapiro, who is proficient in Armenian, Greek, Persian and Turkish.
Read more at News at Princeton.
Watch an interview with Henry Shapiro and Professor Molly Greene.
