Fifth-year Ph.D. student Rami Koujah has been named a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellow. Koujah specializes in the study of Islamic law and legal theory, and his dissertation, “Islamic Legal Personhood: An Intellectual History,” discusses the intellectual history of legal personhood in Islamic jurisprudence — who (or what) counts as a person in the eyes of the law — and its entanglement with philosophy, politics, and theology.

The Newcombe Fellowship, funded by the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, is the largest and most prestigious award for Ph.D. candidates in the humanities and social sciences addressing questions of ethical and religious values in interesting, original, or significant ways. Fellows receive a 12-month award of $30,000 to support the final year of dissertation writing.