Stanford Professor Wins the Grawemeyer Award for Religion

Tanya Luhrmann, the Watkins University Professor in the department of anthropology at Stanford University, has been selected as the winner of the 2014 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. The award is one of five Grawemeyers given out annually by the University of Louisville. The award includes a $100,000 prize.

Dr. Luhrmann was honored for her book When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012). She conducted four years of fieldwork research in Chicago and Northern California with members of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship, whose members speak in tongues.

Before coming to Stanford in 2007, Professor Luhrmann taught at the University of Chicago for eight years and the University of California at San Diego for 11 years. She is a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard University and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in social anthropology from Cambridge University in England.