Iris Nominations

The Iris Book Award

The Iris Book Award is an annual prize of $2000 given to an outstanding work at the intersection of science, religion, and technology. Specifically, the prize recognizes scholarship that, in explicit or implicit ways, offers new insights into the meaning and status of the human being in relation to powerful cultural and historical forces emanating from religion/theology, nature, science and/or technology.

Previous winners:The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors (Viking, 2017) by David George Haskell and Divine Variations: How Christian Thought Became Racial Science (Stanford University Press, 2018) by Terence Keel.

Watch the 2020 Iris Book Award Ceremony

A reading and discussion with prize-winner David George Haskell, in conversation with Kocku von Stuckrad and David Abram, moderated by Lisa Sideris.

Watch the 2021 Iris Book Award Ceremony

A reading and discussion with prize-winner Terence Keel, in conversation with J. Kameron Carter and Myrna Perez Sheldon, moderated by Lisa Sideris.

Eligibility & Nomination Process

Books eligible for the Iris Award this round must be have a publication date between 2015 and 2022.

Previously nominated books will remain in the pool until their eligibility expires. Edited volumes are not eligible but co-authored works are.

Nominations are due June 1, 2025. The Award will be announced midsummer. The winning author will be honored at a ceremony the following Fall.

A group of active scholars in the field nominates up to three books per nominator per year. Presses may also nominate one book per year. Books nominated through this process are evaluated by a smaller jury of scholars. Nominators may eventually be invited to serve on the jury award and new nominators will be solicited regularly.

Nominations should briefly address the award criteria (no more than 350 words per nomination) and should be sent to lsideris@ucsb.edu.

Criteria

  • Contributions to understanding the human in relation to contemporary or historical intersections of science and/or technology, nature, and religion/theology.

  • Work that thinks beyond existing categories or methods in religion and science;

  • Work that exemplifies open-minded inquiry and/or intellectual humility;

  • Skillful integration of interdisciplinary perspectives or methodologies;

  • Exemplary writing and clarity of expression;

  • Demonstrated or anticipated impact on understanding the relationship between science/technology, nature, and religion.

Iris Book Award logo

The Iris Book Award is funded by the Henry Luce Foundation and supported by the Office of the Vice Provost for Research at Indiana University Bloomington.