Congratulations to Dr. Justin Willson, who was just awarded the 2023 Emerging Scholar Prize by the Society for Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art & Architecture (SHERA) for his article “On the Aesthetic of Diagrams in Byzantine Art,” which was published in Speculum in July. The judges had the following to say about his work:

“The article is a tour de force, drawing on an impressive command of multiple languages, theological traditions, texts, and images in order to reconstruct a ‘period vocabulary for discussing formal structures which cut across East and West.’ It is an exceptionally lucid, as well as richly nuanced, exploration of how the Eastern and Western churches understood the nature of the Trinity, and how and why their ability to express that nature in diagrams sheds new light on icons. To present such abstruse theological parsing of different contested truths with such clarity not only speaks to Dr. Willson’s scholarship, it also demonstrates the profundity of his discovery: that theological diagrams provide a powerful tool with which to better understand the dialogue between icons, texts and diagrams.”

Congratulations, Dr. Willson! Well deserved.