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of the Episcopal Church

Grants & Awards

Grants and Awards

The Grants and Research Committee of the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church invites requests for grants to be awarded July 2025. Funding is provided to those pursuing the Historical Society’s objectives, especially promotion of the preservation of the history of the Episcopal Church and churches of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Requests must be submitted no later than May 1st to be considered for 2025 awards. Grant recipients are expected to make an appropriate submission to the Society’s journal, Anglican and Episcopal History or its features publication, The Historiographer.

APPLICATION CYCLE OPEN
Closes on May 1


General Grants

General grant requests may be from individuals, academic entities or church entities seeking financial assistance in support of disseminating research on Episcopal and Anglican church history. Grants exist to facilitate travel (e.g. to an archive or other research relevant location), defray the cost of research materials (e.g. for duplication or permissions), or support public history projects. Grant requests are not considered for stipends, equipment purchases, website creation, or digital storage.

Prospective applicants are strongly encouraged to contact the committee chair before submitting their application.

Past grants have been given for archival research, publication of books and articles, public digital history projects, and support of history conferences. Awards range from $500 to $2,500, which depend on the number of requests approved and the amount of funding available from the Historical Society. 

REQUEST SUBMISSION

  • Regular grants request submission is currently open and closes May 1, 2025
  • Prichard Prize request submission is currently open and closes May 1, 2025.

Regular Grant Requests and Materials


Materials to submit (.PDF preferred) to Dr. Benjamin Guyer (benjamin.m.guyer@gmail.com).

  1. A statement, no more than 500 words, on the subject and purpose of the research or project, including explanation of how it contributes to a shared understanding of the history of the Episcopal Church and/or Anglicanism;
  2. A single page bibliography or reference list;
  3. A concise curriculum vitae or resume of the proposer;
  4. A projected budget with amount requested and detail of use. Explain other resources available or pursuing, especially if granted funds are for an amount less than requested;
  5. Indicate how you learned about the Historical Society's grants program;
  6. At least two (2) letters of recommendation or support from those familiar with the proposer and project (for a graduate student, one from main supervising professor expected).

Robert W. Prichard Award Application and Materials

Materials to submit (.PDF preferred) to [linked when submissions are open].

    1. A statement, no more than 500 words, describing how the Episcopal or Anglican element of the work is a constitutive (not peripheral) part of the dissertation;
    2. A complete digital version of the dissertation, with all scholarly apparatus; 
    3. A concise curriculum vitae;
    4. Indicate how you learned about the Historical Society grants program;
    5. Certification of a successful defense between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2024 through a letter from the committee chair or member.

    Robert W. Prichard Prize

    The Robert W. Prichard Prize recognizes an outstanding Ph.D., Th.D., or D.Phil. dissertation which considers the history of the Episcopal Church (including 17th and 18th century British colonies which became the United States) as well as the Anglican church in the worldwide Anglican Communion. The dissertation need not focus solely, or even principally, on the history of the Episcopal Church or Anglicanism. The selection committee welcomes dissertations which place that history in conjunction with other strands of church history, or even place it in dialogue with non-ecclesial themes of American history. The Episcopal or Anglican element of the work should be a constitutive, not peripheral, part of the dissertation.

    Applicants may submit a dissertation for consideration, successfully defended between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2024. It may be submitted by the author or on their behalf. Submissions should be a full electronic version of the dissertation, complete with all scholarly apparatus.

    The recipient will receive a $2,000 prize and is invited to be a guest of the Historical Society during a churchwide event to publicly receive the award. It is expected the Prichard recipient will write an appropriate article for Anglican and Episcopal History based on part of, or the whole of the dissertation. If there are other contractual obligations for the dissertation, the recipient would work with the AEH Editor to determine publishing possibilities.


    If an award is made, a Grant Acceptance Form must be returned before funds are released. Requirements include returning a W-9 (or other documentation), attribution in any publication drawn upon the project supported, submission of a report of accomplishments, and permission for the Historical Society to publish recipients' names and titles of research or projects. It is expected recipients will make a submission to Anglican and Episcopal History, or the features publication, The Historiographer, when appropriate. A 1099 will be provided as grants may be taxable  — consult a tax advisor.

    Grant Awards
    announced in July

    2024 Grant Recipients

    • Tucker Adkins - postdoctoral student at Calvin College, for researching and editing the journals of William Seward with David Ceri Jones.
    • Christopher Arnold - doctoral student at Syracuse University, for studying the papers of Emmett Jarrett, the first Anglican to lead a Catholic Worker intentional community.
    • Mikkaela Bailey - doctoral student at the Catholic University of America, for doctoral research on late medieval guilds in England.
    • The Episcopal and Lutheran ministry at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville - digitization work of their historical records.
    • Christian Clement-Schlimm - doctoral student at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, for doctoral research in England on Edward Bickersteth.
    • Robert Flanagan - chaplain at General Theological seminary, to defray the costs of researching and publishing an edited collection of essays on Phillips Brooks.
    • Neil Fleming - faculty member at the University of Warcester, for a research trip to Lambeth Palace Library to study archival material on relations between the Church of England and the Church of the East after World War I.
    • Alan Guenther - faculty member at Briercrest College, for archival research in England Ram Chandra Bose, a late-nineteenth century evangelist in North India and advocate of episcopacy.
    • Marianna Klaiman - independent scholar, for continuing research on ecclesiastical textiles in New York.
    • Cameron Nations - D.Min student at Sewanee, for research on the ministry of John Claypool.
    • Samuel Richards - social science and history teacher at the International School of Kenya, for research on how colonial clergy responded to violence in the Kenya Colony perpetrated during the Kenyan War for Independence.
    • Anthony Sammarco - independent scholar, for research on the history of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Mattapan, Massachusetts.
    • Phil Sinitiere - Scholar in Residence at the W.E.B. Du Bois Center, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, for research on the Rev. William Howard Melish and civil rights at the Church of the Holy Spirit, Brooklyn.

    2023 GRANT RECIPIENTS

    • Aaron Pelot – doctoral student at St. Mary’s College, University of St. Andrews. Studying the inculturation of the Book of Common Prayer in the Anglican Church in Japan.
    • Angelica Duran – professor at Purdue University, and Katie Calloway, professor at Baylor University. Offsetting the cost of reproducing visual art in their forthcoming study on the influence of John Bunyan.
    • Brian Hanson – professor at Bethlehem College and Seminary. Studying pastoral care and church discipline in the early modern Church of England.
    • Charles Egleston – independent scholar. Studying the history of African American Episcopalians in South Carolina between the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
    • Jon Thompson – postdoctoral research associate at St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge, and Jacob Conrod, an undergraduate at William & Mary. Studying the spiritual history and influence of William and Mary.
    • Kefas Lamak – doctoral student in Religious Studies at the University of Iowa. Studying religion, colonialism, and missions in the Niger area, c. 1860-1920.
    • Marianna Klaiman – independent scholar. Studying vestments and ecclesiastical textiles in dioceses of New York and Long Island.
    • Stephanie Derrick – independent scholar. Studying the influence of Episcopalian women on religious publishing in the United States.
    • Philadelphia Eleven – a documentary film project about the ordination of women in the Episcopal Church. Awarded from the Cragon Fund for Special Projects.
    • The Living Church –continued digitization of back issues of TLC. Awarded from the Cragon Fund for Special Projects.

    2022 GRANT RECIPIENTS

    • Christy Baty – MA candidate at University of Nebraska at Kearney, to research the role of embroidered book bindings in women’s religious lives in early modern England.

    • Devin Burns – PhD candidate at Florida State University, to study the Confederate Episcopal Church and its relationship to the making of Lost Cause historiography.
    • Mongezi Guma – Canon, Anglican Church in South Africa, to research Sister Alberta Ngudle, a Religious Sister from Tsolo, who founded in 1919 an African female Religious Community of St. John the Baptist (CSJB).
    • Laura Hernandez-Ehrisman – Faculty member, Department of History, Austin Community College, to research the place of slavery and race relations in the history of St. David’s Episcopal Church, Austin.
    • Stephen Kapinde – Lecturer, Religion and Public Life, Pwani University, to investigate the long standing and ambiguous history of the Anglican Church and ex-slave’s descendants at Frere Town in Kenya.
    • Simon Lewis – independent scholar, to study doctrinal debate in the early-eighteenth century Church of Ireland, focusing on the contributions made by the clergyman Edward Nicholson.
    • Donn Mitchell – independent scholar, for research on Frances Perkins and the religious dimension of the New Deal by placing it within the context of the Episcopal Church’s role in social mission.
    • Daphne Noyes – independent scholar, to continue her research on the life of Adeline Blanchard Tyler (1805-1875), the first deaconess in the Episcopal Church.
    • Donna Ray – Senior Lecturer in History and Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, to research the voices of laywomen, especially their “soft power,” in shaping the Episcopal Church in the American Deep South.
    • Bart Segu – PhD candidate in systematic theology, St. Paul’s University, Kenya, to study the influence of liberation theology upon John Henry Okullu and his pursuit for social justice in Kenya.
    • Diocese of Mississippi –  to digitize five audio cassettes and thirty-three VHS tapes, 1975-2003, which will include sharing the stories online through the diocesan website. 
    • Diocese of Milwaukee –for the collection and dissemination of oral histories of the Milwaukee Diocese of the Episcopal Church.

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    Promoting preservation of the history of the Episcopal Church
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