The Magis Prize
Congratulations to the 2025-2026 Magis Prize recipients: Ian Lyons, Blythe Shepard, and Andrew Zeitlin!
From left to right: Blythe Shepard, Soyica Colbert, and Ian Lyons.
Starting in academic year 2024-2025 and for three subsequent years, the Magis Prize recognizes associate professors of exceptional creativity who are making a profound impact in their field of scholarship. It makes an investment in the candidate’s potential to make future advances, by providing $100,000 and two semesters of research leave to focus on scholarship. Further, it seeks to enhance student participation in advanced research collaborations with extraordinary faculty. Selected winners will have an outstanding scholarly record of unusually high impact, and present a compelling and potentially transformative research agenda.
Three winners will be selected in each of the next four years. Each winner will receive $100,000 to support their research and two semesters of research leave free of teaching and service, to be used within three years. The two semesters of research may be taken together or apart or in combination with other research leaves but no more than three semesters of research leave may be taken consecutively. The two semesters of research leave will not count towards sabbatical accrual. Units will receive support for covering lost teaching due to the two semesters of research leave.
Responsibilities of the Magis Prize Recipient
In each year of the three-year Magis Prize, the awardee will present a progress report on the work funded by the prize to the Provost. In the last years of the prize, the awardee will meet with Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) instructional design teams to consider how to incorporate the innovations created over the term of the prize into the Georgetown curriculum. When the research facilitated by the Magis Prize has reached an appropriate level of completion, the awardee will deliver a university-wide lecture describing the results of the research. All publications resulting from the prize should cite the support of the Magis Prize.
Selection Process
Submissions are now closed for the 2025-2026 Magis Prize. The application for the 2026-2027 Magis Prize will open in late Spring 2026. Associate Professors who were tenured in academic years 2023-2024, 2024-2025, or 2025-2026 in the Georgetown College of Arts & Sciences, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, Walsh School of Foreign Service, McDonough School of Business, McCourt School of Public Policy, Earth Commons Institute, School of Nursing, and the School of Health are eligible to apply.
Application materials include a current curriculum vitae (use template from tenure dossier) and a three-page essay describing the applicant’s research agenda that tackles a problem or challenge of importance to society today. Applicants may propose a new project or extend an ongoing research project. The essay must address 1) the significance of the problem or challenge; 2) the general research approach; 3) what makes the proposed work exceptionally innovative or original; and 4) the nature and significance of the involvement of students in the project. A detailed budget is not required, but the applicant should describe how the funds they will receive will enable them to carry out the project’s work.
Materials should be uploaded to this BOX folder by 5:00 pm on June 15th, 2026.
Each application will be evaluated by two experts related to the area of the proposed work, selected from among the Georgetown University faculty. The application and the expert evaluations will be reviewed by a panel of distinguished faculty, who will make their recommendations for the three winners to the Provost. Winners will be announced in September 2026.