University of Chicago student Tori Harris, a fourth-year in the College, has been selected as a 2026 Rhodes Scholar. She will attend Oxford University next fall with the goal of earning her master’s of science in both African studies and archaeology.
“It’s an incredible honor to be selected to study as a Rhodes Scholar,” said Harris. “There’s a part of me that feels like this is a little surreal. But I’m excited to be given this opportunity to study what I love at Oxford. I’m hoping to do right by the people who set me on this journey as I move forward in my work.”
She is the 56th student from the University of Chicago to be named a Rhodes Scholar and the third student from the College to be awarded the prestigious honor in the past 12 months.
“Tori has not only exhibited remarkable creativity during her time in the College, but also demonstrated the effectiveness of community-based knowledge—a hallmark of public archaeology,” said Melina Hale, dean of the College. “We’re incredibly proud of her and this achievement.”
Harris, who studies anthropology and creative writing in the College, has focused on using archaeology to recover African American culture, history and life in the face of erasure. Raised in Tulsa, Okla., she gained her first archaeological experience when she researched and excavated landmarks from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
“My path in archaeology started when I volunteered during the riot’s centennial anniversary,” Harris said. “I was 16 years old, and had a role in mapping smaller community sites that shaped the city and those neighborhoods for years to come. However, it wasn’t until my second year at UChicago that I became interested in African diasporic religious practices and started studying the connection between those practices and the revolutionary theory of those who were enslaved.”
She is currently working on her thesis in material culture—the study of physical objects, resources and spaces that people use to define themselves. Using artifacts she recovered from the Woodland Plantation in Louisiana during an excavation this past summer, she used her creative writing major to weave information into narratives.
“History is, in some sense, a creative discipline because you don't always know the exact facts of everything that happened,” Harris said. “And especially in archaeology, it's very difficult to find the exact facts from the fragments we find in the ground. So, there's a creative process that comes with it.”
At Oxford, she plans to approach her studies with a methodological approach that can lean on the United Kingdom’s history of public archaeology—one that Harris said has a strong focus on community involvement and expertise. Last summer, Harris was helping to excavate Duncan Plaza, a public park in New Orleans, when locals stopped by her dig site to ask what the team was doing. One of those people was the third-great-grandson of a resident that lived in that neighborhood who now works with the project to uncover more of the city’s history using their knowledge of genealogy in the area.
It’s a lesson she hopes to take with her to Britain.
“There is a project in the outskirts of Cardiff that uses local volunteers at their archaeological sites to not only help out with research but also to care for the site,” Harris said. “It’s honestly the reason why I want to be in the U.K. I want to learn what the best way to reach community members is and how to involve them and their local expertise in the discovery of history that is right in their backyards.”
Harris said the Rhodes Scholarship honored not just herself, but also her family, friends and professors who supported her along the way.
“It’s rare to encounter someone who is Tori’s age that already knows deep in their bones that they want to get into archaeology,” said Jennifer Cole, professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development at UChicago. “She has the right combination of passion, smarts and stick-to-itiveness to be the next bright mind in our field and I can’t wait to see what she does with this opportunity.”
Harris was also supported by the Office of National Fellowships in the College Center for Research and Fellowships, which guides candidates through rigorous application processes and interview preparation for nationally competitive awards such as the Rhodes Scholarship. The center’s team helps students like Harris identify and articulate how their distinctive backgrounds prepare them to realize a better world.
Additional support is provided by the Marshall and Rhodes faculty nomination committee, whose ongoing service is a critical part of student success at the national level.