Congratulations to Professor Emeritus Konrad Eisenbichler (CRRS / Italian Studies / CMS) who has been awarded the 2024 Anne Lake Prescott Prize for mentoring students and junior colleagues, conferred annually by the Sixteenth Century Society.
“The selection committee for the Anne Lake Prescott Prize, an award which recognizes exceptional mentorship of students and junior scholars, has chosen to award this year’s Prescott Prize to Dr. Konrad Eisenbichler, Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, specializing in Italian Renaissance Studies. Since the early 1980s, Professor Eisenbichler has provided guidance, advice, and support to generations of graduate students and junior colleagues through his long teaching career, his many leadership positions in Renaissance Studies both inside and outside Toronto, his shrewd attention as an editor, and the durable relationships that he has sustained with younger scholars who have benefited from his generosity. The professional roles through which he has promoted others’ careers are too numerous to list here, but they have included the Directorship of the University of Toronto’s Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, the Presidency of the Sixteenth Century Society and of the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies, editorships in multiple journals and book series, and membership on a long list of boards, working groups, and committees. He has also long cultivated academic community in more direct ways, hosting graduate students and their families at dinner and housing visiting scholars, and all of his nominators remarked on his enthusiastic celebration of others’ accomplishments. To use his nominators’ words, his “unwavering guidance,” “tireless involvement,” and “selfless service” make Konrad Eisenbichler an ideal recipient of the Prescott Prize.”