Christopher A. (Drew) Jones, PhD, professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences, has earned The Ohio State University 2026 Distinguished Scholar Award. Senior leadership in the Enterprise for Research, Innovation and Knowledge recently surprised Jones with the honor.
“Thank you; this is such a humbling and surprising honor,” said Jones during the surprise visit.
“I feel fortunate to be able to work in a department that has supported my research and allowed me to explore the kinds of questions that I find meaningful. I’m especially grateful to my colleagues and students in the department and across the University. They make Ohio State a truly rewarding and collegial place to work.”
Jones is an internationally recognized authority on the manuscripts, literature and customs of early medieval Christianity.
“Dr. Jones’ work been described as being in a class by itself – he is well known for finding, restoring and making sense of very old writings – even bringing back works that people thought were lost forever,” said John M. Horack, vice president of research. “He is remarkably generous with his knowledge, from collaborating across disciplines to meticulous documentation that ensures future scholars can continue to build upon the work.”
“Your reputation certainly precedes you, so this is certainly not a surprise” said Dana Renga, divisional dean of arts and humanities. “I was so happy to see the effect you’ve had on your students, they remember your generosity, they remember how much time you put into their successes.”
“You are a scholar’s scholar,” said Elizabeth Hewitt, English Department chair. “You illuminate all the texts you read and translate and I can not think of someone more deserving of this remarkable honor.”
Jones works in the areas of early medieval languages, literatures, and history, with specific interests in Old English, medieval Latin, manuscript studies, liturgical history, and monastic culture. His five books and many articles range widely across sources from medieval England and Continental Europe. He is particularly known for his innovative work translating and reconstructing the literary productions and careers of authors, poets and intellectuals from the 8th through 11th centuries, including those that had previously been “lost.” His research has been recognized through awards and fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study, the Mellon Foundation, the Medieval Academy, and the English Association of the UK. In addition, he serves on several of the most prestigious editorial boards in his field, including the Dictionary of Old English at the University of Toronto and the Old English Series of the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library at Harvard University. He earned his doctorate from Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, his master’s from University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), and his bachelor’s from the University of the South (Sewanee).
The Distinguished Scholar Award is among the highest annual honors awarded at Ohio State. The university-level award annually honors six faculty members who demonstrate scholarly activity, conduct research or creative works that represent exceptional achievements in their fields and garner distinction for the university.
Award recipients are nominated by their departments and chosen by a committee of senior faculty, including past award recipients. Distinguished Scholars receive an honorarium and a research grant to be used over the next three years.
Quotes from Jones's nomination:
“His book-length publications have consisted of editions and translations with extensive commentary, the value of which is hard to overestimate, especially because much of what Professor Jones has done is to bring unpublished or hard-to-find texts to a wider readership. Let me emphasize that producing a good edition requires a knowledge and skills that are far from universal. Jones is hard working. To publish the amount of articles and books he has produced in the last 25 years is no small feat, especially because much of this production is original scholarship involving an extensive acquaintance with the literary and historical culture of a period where few manuscripts survive. Success in this field takes deep learning and the sleuthing skills of a detective to make sense of fragmented clues,” Daniel Donaghue, Harvard University.
“I brought this unknown twelfth-century poem to Jones’s attention because I knew that he was one of the very few scholars in the world who could make it intelligible to a modern audience. While I contributed the historical sections of the volume’s introduction, Jones did the lion’s share of the work of editing the Latin text, parsing the poem’s meter, translating the often obscure and difficult verses into readable English, and tracking down all the classical and medieval allusions woven into the text, which he synthesized in the literary portions of the volume’s introduction. This is the kind of time-consuming and brutally painstaking work that Jones does better than any other living scholar,” Scott G. Bruce, Fordham University.
“Professor Jones's work has appeared in some of the most prestigious outlets for medieval scholarship…Jones’s work is consistently enlightening and original, and it is as impressive for its breadth and subtlety of interpretation and cultural analysis as for its philological and archival expertise. Your department is indeed fortunate to have a scholar of Jones’s calibre and international reputation in the field of early English and medieval Latin studies.,” Charles D. Wright, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.