The American Historical Association has awarded the 2026 Joan Kelly Memorial Prize in Women’s History to Professor Susan Ashbrook Harvey for Ministries of Song: Women’s Voices in Ancient Syriac Christianity (University of California Press, 2025). 

The Joan Kelly Memorial prize is awarded annually for the book in women’s history and/or feminist theory that best reflects the high intellectual and scholarly ideals exemplified by the life and work of Joan Kelly.

Susan Ashbrook Harvey is the Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of Religion and History at Brown University, where she has also served as the Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence, and the Director of the Program in Early Cultures.  She specializes in Syriac studies, early Christian history, and Christianity of the Byzantine and Syriac traditions, particularly with respect to women.

For more information about the award, visit Joan Kelly Memorial Prize in Women’s History.

To read Professor Harvey's complete bio, visit her research page.