The Center is pleased to welcome the following Graduate Prize Fellows for the 2025-26 academic year.
The Graduate Prize Fellows program recognizes and supports post-generals graduate students enrolled at Princeton University with distinguished academic records (in any discipline) whose dissertation research centrally involves the critical study of human values. In addition to providing tangible support, a main purpose is to enable scholars working on topics in human values to engage with each other both informally and in the yearlong faculty-led course, Dissertation Seminar, where they present their work in progress and participate in workshops on career development and placement.
Kimberly Akano is a fifth-year PhD candidate in the Religion in the Americas subfield of the Department of Religion. She is also pursuing a certificate from the Department of African American Studies. Broadly, her research considers the relationship between religion, migration, and politics. Her dissertation explores how twentieth-century West African students refashioned religious discourse and institutional networks to advocate for higher education opportunities in the US. Ultimately, she examines how migrants employ religion to inform the meaning and scope of their mobility amidst geopolitical constraints.
At Princeton, Kimberly's research has been supported by the Center for the Study of Culture, Society, and Religion, the Effron Center for the Study of America, and the Center for Digital Humanities. In addition to her research, she has worked as a Social Impact Fellow in the Journals Division of the University of Pennsylvania Press where she contributed to the launch of Global Black Thought, the official journal of the African American Intellectual History Society. Kimberly holds a B.A. in Psychology from Rice University and an M.Div. from Emory University.
Theodore Becker-Jacob is a PhD candidate in the philosophy department. He specializes in political and social philosophy. He is interested in social theoretic questions about power, control, influence, and social structure, and in normative questions about democracy, inequality, and collective self-rule. His dissertation develops a formal modeling approach to the study of social power and examines implications for normative democratic theory. He has secondary research interests in the history of Africana philosophy, especially nineteenth-century West African political thought. Before coming to Princeton, he received a B.A. in Philosophy from Stanford University and an M.A. in Logic and Philosophy of Science from the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (LMU Munich).
Chelsea Guo is a third-year PhD candidate in political theory. Her work is dedicated to understanding why oppression persists. To that end, she currently studies the moral and political implications of ignorance, specifically ignorance about oppression. Her dissertation project marshalls insights from feminist and social epistemology, Marxist critiques of ideology, and recent work in democratic theory to think through how our politics produces and sustains this kind of ignorance—how it delineates and enforces the boundaries of intelligibility, how it renders certain experiences unspeakable or unknowable, how it erases certain perspectives altogether—and what might be done about it. Chelsea holds an MPhil in Political Theory from Merton College, Oxford, as well as a B.S./M.S. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and a B.A. in Political Science from Yale University.
Gabriel Karger is a fourth year PhD candidate in the Department of Politics working in normative legal theory, with a focus on on tort law and anti-discrimination law. His dissertation aims to better understand the moral grounds of a number of formal equality rights—including rights to meritocratic equal opportunity, rights to religious exemptions, and rights to non-discrimination in calculating accident damages. Gabriel has an A.B. in philosophy from Harvard College and recently completed a JD at Columbia Law School.
Antonio Kerstenetzky is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Philosophy and a member of the Program in Classical Philosophy. His dissertation focuses on Plato’s defense of intellectual autonomy. In particular, he is interested in how Plato’s evolving conception of rhetoric—from the Gorgias to the Phaedrus—helps explain a shift in his view: from seeing rhetoric as an obstacle to intellectual autonomy to seeing it as a possible means of fostering it. Antonio’s broader research interests include ancient Greek philosophy, philosophy of language, and Latin American philosophy. He holds a B.A. in History from Fluminense Federal University (UFF) and an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of São Paulo (USP).
Casey Lewry is a fifth-year PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology. Her research examines what motivates Americans to participate in civic engagement, such as voting. Specifically, how do people explain why inequalities, such as the racial wealth gap, exist? How do their answers to these questions motivate them to take action? In Casey's dissertation, she proposes that lay theories of social change lead people to feel responsible for making a difference, which leads them to take action. Casey has taught courses through the Prison Teaching Initiative for four years, including Psychology of Justice and Practical Issues in Ethics and Social Philosophy. She received her B.A. in Psychology and Philosophy at Boston University in 2019. Her research was previously supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
Aemann McCornack is a third-year PhD candidate in the Department of Politics with an interest in political theory, comparative politics, and comparative political thought. Their dissertation studies the intellectual history of ancient autocracies, which looks at the ways in which political actors — advisors close to tyrants, citizens subjugated by tyrannical rules, and tyrants' self-confessions regarding the flaws of their institutions — recounted, constituted, justified, criticized, and so textualized the lived reality of one-person rule, that is, "sole rulership," in the late Warring States period in early China (453–221 BCE) and in fifth and fourth century BCE Greece (480–323 BCE). They hold a B.A. in Politics and Classics (Double Major) from Reed College (summa cum laude).
Killian McLoughlin is a PhD candidate in psychology and social policy, working under the supervision of Dr. Molly Crockett. His research combines computational and experimental methods to explore how moral and emotional factors shape online behavior. His dissertation examines how online incentive structures erode epistemic and civic virtues by amplifying vilifying narratives that contribute to the spread of misinformation. Originally from Ireland, Killian holds degrees in philosophy, psychology, and data science, and is an avid baker in his spare time.
Austen Van Burns is a sixth-year doctoral candidate in the Department of History with a specialization in the history of science. She studies how physicists, mathematicians, logicians, and linguistic philosophers conveyed knowledge during the rise of European fascism. She focuses on members of the Unity of Science movement who did not emigrate before the outbreak of the Second World War. By documenting how the unifiers navigated the collapse of their world, her dissertation argues that states of exception – some of the most extreme events of the twentieth century – reveal the interpersonal and conceptual structures that have underpinned modern intellectual labor. Before coming to Princeton, Austen earned a B.A. with Honors in Classical Studies from Swarthmore College. She currently holds a Charlotte Elizabeth Procter Honorific Fellowship.