SHEAR Prizes

August 27, 2025—Longtime SHEAR member Robyn Lily Davis and her husband William J. McNichol have established an endowment for our annual dissertation prize. As a result of this extraordinary generosity, we have renamed it the SHEAR Robyn Lily Davis Dissertation Prize.

Robyn Lily Davis has had a long history of service to our organization. From 2015 to 2023 she served as SHEAR’s National Conference Coordinator, an exacting job that brought her into close contact with hundreds of members. In tackling this work, she did far more than continue the legacy that Craig Thompson Friend built during his time in that role. She found ways to make the conference more inclusive, bringing SHEARites together virtually during the Covid-19 pandemic, and rebuilding the annual in-person conference once it was safer to travel. Her extraordinary labor was honored in 2023 with SHEAR’s Distinguished Service Award—a document I urge you to read in full. Since passing along the job to Erika Huckestein, Robyn has remained a go-to mentor and advisor for all of us. As a longtime Friend of SHEAR, she has provided annual donations while going above and beyond to make additional sponsorships at the annual conference.

She has done all of this on top of her day job as Chair of the Department of History and Philosophy at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, where she is Associate Professor. An established author and scholar, a lover of dogs, shoes, and a very nice cocktail, Robyn somehow manages to juggle all these balls without losing her sense of perspective and humor.

SHEAR’s Dissertation Prize, originally called the Manuscript Prize, has long served an important goal: it helps emerging scholars publish their work. Our current arrangement with the University of Virginia Press provides the winner with a book contract as well as an intensive, in-person manuscript workshop with leading scholars at an early stage to help the author produce the best possible book. Together with our colleagues at the Press and the Jefferson Scholars Foundation, we have also provided travel funds to help the winner attend the SHEAR conference to receive the award.

Thanks to Robyn and Bill’s gift, the SHEAR Robyn Lily Davis Dissertation Prize will also come with a $1000 award starting with the July 2026 winner. This is an enormous benefit to our organization and helps precisely those emerging scholars most in need of a leg up in difficult times. For all of these reasons, we here at SHEAR owe our profound gratitude to Robyn and Bill, and we look forward to a new generation of winners of the Prize continuing to teach us new ways of understanding the early American republic. Thank you!