Kaycie Brookens ’26 Wins International Human Rights Essay Prize

Kaycie Brookens ’26 has been awarded the 2026 Burns H. Weston International Human Rights Essay Prize for undergraduate students from the University of Iowa Center for Human Rights.

Kaycie Brookens ’26 has been awarded the 2026 Burns H. Weston International Human Rights Essay Prize for undergraduate students from the University of Iowa Center for Human Rights.

She earned the award for work that began as her Mentored Advanced Project (MAP) in American Studies at Grinnell and culminated in her essay, “Reflections in the Mirror: A Case Study of Prisons, Publications, and Power.” The review committee praised the work for its examination of restorative justice through the nation’s longest-running newspaper produced by incarcerated individuals.

Research Rooted in Human Stories

For Brookens, the project provided an opportunity to combine her academic pursuits with interests she developed during a previous summer internship in a federal district court.

“After hearing the stories of people involved in the criminal justice system, I knew I wanted to see change,” Brookens said. “I wanted to see a criminal justice system that understood its participants as human and cared about their stories and the outcomes of their lives after serving their sentences.”

Her research led her to The Prison Mirror, a newspaper written, edited, and published by incarcerated men at the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater in Bayport Minnesota. Founded in 1887, it is the oldest continuously operating prison newspaper in the United States.

“Guided by my phenomenal advisor, Professor Sarah Purcell, I spent a year looking back through the Mirror’s 139 years of publications, and was struck by the themes of identity, agency, and activism that resonated throughout the years,” she said.

Drawing on literary, political, and philosophical frameworks she studied at Grinnell, Brookens explored how opportunities for self-expression can help humanize the criminal justice system and support restorative justice.

Brookens first shared her findings publicly at the Iowa Human Rights Research Conference, which was hosted by Grinnell College for the first time in April 2026. Encouraged by Purcell, she submitted a condensed version of her research and was selected to present alongside graduate and undergraduate scholars from across the state.

“I knew I wanted to present my work in some capacity, but she was the one who encouraged me to submit my work for consideration in the conference,” Brookens said.

Her presentation received praise from conference participants, including Professor Neal McNabb of Coe College, who encouraged her to pursue publication and recommended her essay for the Weston Prize. Following the conference, a University of Iowa professor nominated Brookens to apply for the award.

The award committee cited her essay’s ability to demonstrate “the restorative justice capacity” of The Prison Mirror and its contribution to conversations about human rights and incarceration.

Room for Restorative Justice

For Brookens, the project reinforced the importance of centering individual experiences when seeking broader social change.

“The project and the path I took to get there showed me how important it is to ensure that individual stories are heard and integrated when trying to make systemic change,” she says.

Receiving the award affirmed both the value of her research and the importance of the questions it explores.

“I am beyond grateful to have been a participant in the conference and a recipient of the Weston prize,” Brookens said. “Both experiences renewed my faith in the idea that there is room for this kind of restorative justice work in both the academic and legal communities, and that stories and identities are valuable elements in the pursuit of human rights.”

The recognition is not the end of the project’s journey. Brookens’ MAP has also been accepted for publication in the next edition of New Errands: The Undergraduate Journal of American Studies, allowing her research to reach an even wider audience.