Andrea Punishill, a 2026 UR graduate, recently received the 2026 George Modlin Book Award. The annual prize recognizes an outstanding book collection conceived and assembled by a senior student at the University of Richmond.

As part of the application, Punishill wrote an essay describing the objective, history, and direction of her personal library; included a bibliography of at least 20 items; and provided a wish list of three books she would most like to add.

Punishill, a double major in leadership studies and gender and sexuality studies, assembled books related to her interests in prison abolition and gender-based violence advocacy, the topic of her Jepson School of Leadership Studies honors thesis.

“What the committee noticed was that it was not just an academic collection built around her studies but that it also reflected her passion beyond the classroom and her intent to continue her involvement with this topic and movement as she graduates and moves forward in her career,” said Lynda Kachurek, head of Book Arts, Archives & Rare Books at Boatwright Memorial Library.

The prize included a certificate of recognition and acknowledgment in this year’s Commencement Program. Punishill’s name will also be added to the George Matthews Modlin Award for Student Book Collections winners’ list on display in Boatwright Memorial Library. The first prize was awarded in 1971.

“I had not started collecting books, as I was a loyal patron of my local library. It was not until college, when I started collecting books for research, that I discovered the importance of cultivating my own personal library,” Punishill wrote in her winning essay.

She began gathering titles during her sophomore year, when she was selected as a University of Richmond Humanities Fellow. On a Fellows’ trip to Washington, D.C., English professor Nathan Snaza took the students on a bookstore tour of the city. She was the last one to leave each store and bought every book she could find on her topics of interest. So far, she has 46 related volumes.

Punishill is also an advocate for victims’ rights. While at UR, she volunteered as a confidential peer sexual misconduct advisor and completed her Jepson School internship with Take Back the Night Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to ending sexual violence.

“One of my great joys in life is when one of my peers asks me to borrow a book or asks me if I have any recommendations on one of the topics they know I am knowledgeable about.”

Punishill will attend graduate school at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, where she will continue to study cultures of gender-based violence and the criminal legal system.