Prizes & Awards
The Lewis Hanke Post-Doctoral Award
award Amount
Up to $1,500
2026 submission Deadline
June 1, 2026
Award Overview
The Lewis Hanke Award carries a stipend of up to $1,500 given annually to a recent Ph.D. recipient in order to conduct field research that will allow transformation of the dissertation into a book. This award was created through generous donations from students, colleagues, and family members of the late Lewis Hanke. Applicants must have completed their Ph.D. degrees in the field of Latin American history no more than four years prior to the closing date of the application. The award will be made by a committee appointed by the CLAH president and confirmed by the CLAH General Committee.
Applications will consist of the following documents: a 1,000-word proposal, a dissertation abstract, a brief CV, two letters of support, and a proposed budget. Please send your application materials to the three committee members listed below, using the file name “LastName_Hanke,” by June 1, 2026. Please make sure the subject line is “Last Name – Hanke.” The Executive Director should be informed of the committee’s decision no later than October 15, 2026.
Note: The CLAH requires current membership for all of its prizes and awards.
While applications and letters of support must be sent to the email address above, questions may be directed to any member of the selection committee:
Hanke Award Committee for 2026:
Donations to the Hanke Award fund can be made here.
2025
Fidel Rodríguez Velásquez, Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, “Entangled by Pearls: Agents, Politics, and Labour in the Making of the Early Modern Atlantic World”
2024
Haley Schroer, Texas Lutheran University, “Sartorial Subversions: Appearance, Identity, and Sumptuary Legislation in the Spanish Empire”
2023
Hannah Abrahamson, College of the Holy Cross, “Her Hands Full of Tribute: Labor and the Encomienda in Early Colonial Yucatán”
2022
William Cohoon, Texas Christian University, “Information Empire: Environmental Social Policy and Resistance in Bourbon Peru”
2021
Antony Keane-Dawes, University of South Carolina, “The Spirit of Opposition: Dominican Politics, Independence, and Loyalties in a Revolutionary Age”
2020
Maria-Clara Torres Bustamante, Stony Brook University, “The Roots of an Illegal Peasant Crop: Coca in Colombia, 1950’s- 1990’s”
2019
Andra B. Chastain, Washington State University, “Visions of Progress: The Santiago Metro and the Struggle for a Rational City”
2018
Joseph Clark, University of Kentucky, “Veracruz and the Caribbean in the Seventeenth Century”
2017
Natasha Varner, University of Arizona, “La Raza Cosmética: Beauty, Race, And Indigeneity in Post-Revolutionary Mexico”
2016
Jennifer Eaglin, Ohio State University, “Sweet Fuel: The Public-Private Development of Brazil’s Ethanol Industry in Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo”
2015
Christy Thornton, Rowan University, “‘Sovereignty and Solidarity”
Honorable Mention:
Rebecca Herman, University of California, Berkeley, “‘Contesting Sovereignty”
2014
Alexander Hidalgo, Texas Christian University, “The Indian Map Trade in Colonial Oaxaca”
2013
Enver Casimir, Marist College, “Kid Chocolate-Champion of the Patria: Sport, Race, and National Aspiration in Republican Cuba”
2012
Zeb Tortorici, New York University, “Contra Natura: Desire, Colonialism and the Unnatural”
2011
David Rex-Galindo, Southern Methodist University, “‘To Sin No More’: Franciscan Missionaries and the Conversion of the Hispanic World”
Honorable Mention:
Camilo Trumper, University of California, Berkeley, “‘A Ganar La Calle’: The Politics of Public Space and Public Art in Allende’s Chile”
2010
Dana Velasco Murillo, University of California, Irvine, “Indians of the Silver City of Zacatecas, Mexico: 1546-1806”
2009
Celso Castilho, Vanderbilt University, “The Rosario Brotherhood, Antislavery, and Public Politics in Late-Nineteenth-Century Recife”
2008
M. Kittiya Lee, Ohio State University, “Conversing in Colony: The Brasilica and the Vulgar in Portuguese America, 1500-1759”
2007
Ian Read, University of California, Berkeley, “Unequally Bound: The Conditions of Slave Life and Treatment in Santos County, Brazil, 1822-1888”
2006
Thomas Rogers, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, “The Deepest Wounds: The Laboring Landscapes of Sugar in Northeastern Brazil”
2005
Nicole Sanders, Lynchburg College, “Gender, Welfare, and the Mexican ‘Miracle’: The Politics of Modernization in Post-Revolutionary Mexico, 1937-1958”
2004
Kristen McCleary, James Madison University, “Culture and Commerce: An Urban History of Theater in Buenos Aires, 1880-1920”
Honorable Mentions:
Cynthia Milton, Université de Montréal, “The Many Meanings of Poverty: Colonial Compacts and Social Assistance in Eighteenth-Century Quito”
Edward Osowski, Pennsylvania State University, “Saints of the Republic: Nahua Religious Obligations in Central Mexico, 1692-1810”
2003
María Elena Martínez, University of Southern California, “The Spanish Concept of Limpieza de Sangre and the Emergence of the Race/ Class System in the Viceroyalty of New Spain”
2002
Bianca Premo, Emory University, “Children of the Father King: Youth, Authority and Legal Minority in Colonial Lima”
2001
Mark Healey, New York University, “Memories of Catastrophe: Rebuilding Lives after the 1944 Earthquake in San Juan, Argentina”
2000
Lessie Jo Frazier, University of South Carolina, “Salt in the Sand: Memory and State Violence in Tarapacá Chile, 1890-Present”
1999
Patrice Elizabeth Olsen, Stephen F. Austin State University, “Artifacts of Revolution: Architecture, Society, and Politics in Mexico City, 1920-1940”
1998
S. Elizabeth Penry, Fordham University, “The People Are King: Modernity and Popular Sovereignty in Indigenous Rebellions of Colonial Peru”
Honorable Mentions:
Karen Racine, Valparaiso University, “Imagining Independence: London’s Spanish American Community (1790-1830)”
Marc Becker, Gettysburg College, “Indian Movement and the Left in Twentieth-Century Ecuador”