Joshua Bennett, Kellen Funk, Carlee Joe-Wong and Rajesh Ranganath have been named co-winners of the Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellowship, Princeton University's top honor for graduate students. The fellowships support the final year of study at Princeton and are awarded to students whose work has exhibited the highest scholarly excellence.

The Jacobus Fellows will be honored at Alumni Day ceremonies Saturday, Feb. 20, at Jadwin Gymnasium.

Funk, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History who came to Princeton in 2011, holds a bachelor's in history from Bob Jones University along with a juris doctorate from Yale. 

Funk's dissertation, "The Lawyers' Code: The Transformation of American Legal Practice," explores the origins of legal trends, which largely began in 1850 when a commission of New York trial lawyers drafted a code that reoriented legal practice toward their interests. His adviser Hendrik Hartog, the Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty and professor of history, said, "Kellen is at the beginning of major career as a legal scholar. He is, not to put too fine of a point on the matter, just enormously talented."

Funk plans on continuing a career in law. "Upon completing my dissertation studies in the summer of 2016, I will begin a series of clerkships in the federal courts," he said. "At the District Court for the Southern District of Texas I will be working with Judge Lee Rosenthal, a pioneer of modern procedures for electronic investigation in civil cases. I will then clerk for Judge Stephen Williams of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit."

(Photo by Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications)