This award honors a graduate student, post-doc, or new psychologist who has recently completed and defended a dissertation pertaining to boys, adolescent males, men or masculinities.
Eligibility
Nominees should be able to demonstrate their successful defense or submission of a finished dissertation after July 1 of the previous year. Nominees need not be members of SPSMM. Nomination materials should be accompanied by two letters of recommendation; one from a member of the dissertation committee, and one from a professor within the nominee's academic department.
How to Apply
A cover letter detailing the award and the person being nominated
Two letters of support from individuals other than the nominator (one from a member of the dissertation committee, one from a professor in the nominee’s department)
The nominee's vita
A phone number where the nominated person can be reached (can be included in the cover letter)
Past Recipients
2022 Winner - Dr. Ali Shames-Dawson
Shames-Dawson is a postdoctoral fellow at Therapists of New York, and her dissertation, “Undoing Dissociation: Masculinity, #MeToo, and Moral Concern” examined men’s responses to the #MeToo movement. Integrating relational perspectives on male identity development from psychoanalytic and developmental literature, her study situates men’s responses to #MeToo within an understanding of male gender identity and expression as subject to patriarchal constraints while nevertheless open and responsive to varying degrees to shifting interpersonal, cultural, and political contexts. Nominators noted that, “Shames-Dawson makes important and groundbreaking contributions that merge contemporary theorizing in relational psychoanalysis with the study of men and masculinity . . . The clarity of exposition and the quality of the writing further distinguish this dissertation, along with its theoretical contribution and its social relevance. In every possible respect, the dissertation deserves this award.”