Ansari Institute Book Prize
The Ansari Institute's Book Prize on Religion & the World highlights the work of scholars who reimagine the connection of religion and global affairs. The Prize was known as the Nasr Prize in its first two years, thanks to the generous support of Drs. Sherif Nasr and Randa Nasr.
Each year, the Ansari Book Prize recognizes the winning author with a significant cash award. In addition, a multifaith symposium highlights the year’s award-winning book while also facilitating important dialogue among scholars from other faith traditions. Past award winners are Sandtalk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World by Tyson Yunkaporta which won in 2022 and Cathonomics: How Catholic Tradition Can Create a More Just Economy by Anthony Annett which won in 2023.
The Ansari Institute believes that recognition of a major book in this form will enhance the importance of the institute as a place for changing the conversation about religion. A symposium around each year’s award-winning book will generate new knowledge—indeed, perhaps even a new subfield—in which ancient wisdom, as transmitted to us in the form of the major religious and philosophical traditions of the world, can inform and even transform current debates.
The award is substantively well aligned with the Ansari Institute’s strategic plan. It will serve as an example of what the late scholar Rabbi Jonathan Sacks once described as religion’s capacity “to be a source of systemic and structural good in a manner that is relevant to global affairs.” Beyond the recognition and generation of scholarship, the award ceremony and symposium helps the Ansari Institute build a community of like-minded scholars that includes members of diverse faith traditions and commitments. Over time, the annual book award symposium reflects a “fellowship of faiths,” as envisioned in the Ansari Institute’s strategic plan.
Eligibility Requirements
In order to be eligible for this award, a book must:
- Speak from a normative and authentic voice that aspires to be representative of a major religious tradition, recognizing that all traditions are internally diverse.
- Be conversant with current “ways of knowing” about the world. In other words, the book must be academically informed by one or more of the academic disciplines in the humanities or the social or natural sciences.
- Engage one or more contemporary issues in global affairs, providing new ways to understand existing problems or identifying novel solutions to already well-defined problems.
- Be conducive to generating a wide-ranging multifaith conversation on 'the world as it should be."
- Must have been published within the past five years. Earlier works that deserve recognition may be considered on an exceptional basis.
Nominations for the award are currently closed. Please contact ansari@nd.edu if you have any addition questions.
Inaugural Symposium - Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
The Ansari Institute held the inaugural Nasr Book Prize Symposium Oct. 2-3, 2022 on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. We were delighted to honor Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta, an Indigenous Australian scholar and the author of Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World. Dr. Yunkaporta's book, which earned widespread acclaim, raised important questions and brought Indigenous ways of knowing to the critical examination of global systems. We discussed this important work with symposium contributors representing diverse religious and secular traditions. Learn more here.
Second Symposium - Cathonomics: How Catholic Tradition Can Create a More Just Economy
On February 15, 2024 the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion honored Dr. Anthony Annett, author of Cathonomics: How Catholic Tradition Can Create a More Just Economy. The book links Catholic social thought and economic insights, addressing global inequality through a new paradigm that prioritizes the common good rather than economic gain for an elite few. The Symposium includes scholars from different faith traditions to respond to the provocative ideas in Cathonomics through the lens of their own scholarly interest and faith traditions. These were organized in a series of panels. Learn more here.
Third Symposium - Religion and World Politics: Connecting Theory with Practice
The Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion awarded its 2026 Book Prize to Dr. Erin K. Wilson for her work, Religion and World Politics: Connecting Theory with Practice. In this book, Wilson contends that the definitions and descriptions of religion which are operative in policy circles and in media are inadequate and misleading, because they fail to incorporate groundbreaking insights from the critical study of religion. Religion “is not an object ‘out there’ that is clearly identifiable, definable and measurable,” she writes, “but rather a fluid, dynamic and ever-changing category made up of rituals, practices, discourses, narratives, institutions, organisations, actors, beliefs and norms that are all context-dependent and variable…” Dr. Wilson will be formally celebrated and present her research this summer at the symposium “Religion and Global Politics across Disciplines and Publics.” She will also participate in an Author Meets Critics Panel at the European Academy of Religion. Learn more here.