Princeton professors Linda Colley and Jill Dolan have received the University’s Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities, which "recognizes extraordinary faculty distinction in humanities and publication; in teaching and advising; and in humanities-related University service."

Linda Colley

Linda Colley

Photo by Maurice Weiss

Linda Colley is the Shelby M.C. Davis 1958 Professor of History. Her research encompasses British, constitutional, global and imperial history. She joined the Princeton faculty in 2003.

“Put simply, Professor Colley is one of the most eminent living historians, full stop," wrote one colleague who nominated Colley for the Behrman Award, and “a major force in the history department.”

“Colley is the premier historian of Britain of our time,” wrote another colleague. “[S]he is able to defamiliarize the familiar, showing how now-established ways of thinking took hold and began molding perceptions and actions, especially those of regular people. … In this sense, she is a political historian of the everyday.”

Colley’s many honors include being named a Dame of the Order of the British Empire in 2022 by Queen Elizabeth II.

According to Colley’s colleagues, one of whom lauded the “accessible and lyrical quality” of her writing, her books forge brilliant new territory in academia while also appealing to a broad public audience.

One colleague noted that when the history department was conducting a search for an expert on British history, Colley’s seminal work “Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837” (1992) — which won the Wolfson Prize for History and put her on the map as a leading expert on nationalism (and unofficial adviser to then-Prime Minister Tony Blair) — was the core text on the undergraduate syllabi of three of the four candidates.

Her 2007 book “The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History,” which one colleague called “a tour de force of what historians call ‘microhistory’ — using individual experiences to illuminate a much larger historical canvas,” was on The New York Times’ list of the 10 best books of that year. Her 2014 book “Acts of Union and Disunion” originated as a series of 15 talks she gave on BBC Radio 4. Colley has guest-curated an exhibition at the British Library in London and delivered the Prime Minister’s Millennium Lecture at 10 Downing Street, among many other public lectures around the world.

“If there were a Nobel Prize in history, Colley would be my nominee,” wrote Jill Lepore of Harvard University in her New Yorker review of Colley’s “The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen” (2021), which unspools constitutional history in the context of global history and war.

At Princeton, Colley’s lecture courses on British imperial history from 1600 to 2000 regularly draw hundreds of undergraduates. Drawing on her deep connections with the departments of English and art and archaeology, and strong relationships with scholars around the world, she devised a perennially popular graduate seminar focused on new research into the 18th through early 20th centuries, which brings experts in the history, literature and art of the period to campus.

Born in Britain, Colley earned her M.A. and Ph.D. from Cambridge University.

Jill Dolan

Jill Dolan

Photo by

Sameer A. Khan/Fotobuddy

Jill Dolan, the Annan Professor in English and professor of theater in the Lewis Center for the Arts, joined the Princeton faculty in 2008. She served as dean of the college from 2015 to 2024.

Dolan is an expert on contemporary American feminist and queer theater and performance, and American theater more generally. She served for six years as the director of Princeton’s Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies and is a faculty affiliate of the Program in American Studies. Her research focuses on preserving opportunities for wonder and what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel calls “radical amazement” in live, communal exchanges, whether at the theater or in the classroom.

“She is the consummate interdisciplinary humanist,” wrote one colleague, “a distinguished teacher of multi-generational renown and impact; and a visionary institution builder who has diligently, ethically and indefatigably deployed the intellectual and social goods of the humanities in service of multiple institutions, most especially, Princeton.”

When Dolan stepped away from teaching to serve as dean of the college, she brought with her the same deep, forward-thinking commitment that she had already shown in the classroom and had been admired for by her colleagues.

As dean, Dolan worked with President Christopher L. Eisgruber and colleagues to propel a number of major initiatives expanding the socioeconomic diversity of the University’s undergraduate population, including increasing the size of the undergraduate population, expanding Princeton’s generous, no-loan financial aid program and establishing the Emma Bloomberg Center for Access and Opportunity.

Capturing the scope of Dolan’s roles as dean, professor and scholar, one colleague wrote: “[Her] contributions to this university have epitomized what the humanities can offer — she has brought understanding, context and thoughtful critique to University initiatives and conversations, and offered possible narratives that elevate, refine and enhance our attempts to bring our best selves to the community, as educators, as students and as citizens.”

In their nominations, her colleagues also lauded her creativity and influence on the curriculum. Dolan devised multiple new courses across the arts and humanities at Princeton — ranging from American studies and English to gender and sexuality studies, and theater. Often, her classes have invited students to explore underrecognized contributors to theater and performance history.

“Jill is innovative, compassionate, curious, engaging and engaged, a fantastic spokesperson and activist for the humanities, for the value of the arts in general and theater in particular,” said one colleague. “The students — undergraduate and graduate — whose lives have been transformed by Jill’s intellectual acuity, and her diligent, empathetic and unwavering encouragement are too many to name.”

Dolan has written or edited 10 books of theater criticism, performance studies, women’s and feminist studies, LGBTQ studies and American studies — including “Theatre and Sexuality,” “Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theatre,” “The Feminist Spectator as Critic,” and a critical study of the plays of Wendy Wasserstein.

She has received many awards for writing and teaching, including being named the American Society for Theatre Research’s Distinguished Scholar in 2013. In 2011, she received the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for her blog “The Feminist Spectator,” a lifetime achievement award from the Women and Theatre Program, and an outstanding teaching award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.

Dolan earned her bachelor’s degree from Boston University and her Ph.D. from New York University.