Accolades
December 2021
Awards
Professor Timothy Brennan (English) won the Palestine Book Award for Biography for his 2021 book Places of Mind: A Life of Edward Said (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
Associate Dean Malinda Lindquist (History) is an inaugural recipient of the University’s Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Awards.
Senior Lecturer Patricia Mougel (French and Italian) has been named Minnesota’s French Teacher of the Year by the Minnesota Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF).
Works by Professor and Raymond O. Mithun Chair in Advertising Jisu Huh (HSJMC) are among a handful of selections included by the American Academy of Advertising in the Most Influential Papers of 2020 across all three of the academic journals published by the Academy (Journal of Advertising, Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising, and Journal of Interactive Advertising. Included are Huh's co-authored editorial "Advancing Computational Advertising: Conceptualization of the Field and Future Directions" and other papers published in the Special Section on Advances in Computational Advertising.
Publications & Creative Activities
Senior Undergraduate Academic Advisor David Perry (History), with co-author Matthew Gabriele, published his book The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe (HarperCollins, 2021).
November 2021
Awards
Professor Emerita Charlotte Melin (German) has been awarded the twenty-sixth Association of Departments of Foreign Languages Award (ADFL) for Distinguished Service to the Profession. The award is presented by the ADFL executive committee and recognizes eminent scholar-teachers who serve the profession in the larger community.
Publications & Creative Activities
Assistant Professor Erin Durban (Anthropology) recently published their article “Anthropology and Ableism” in American Anthropologist.
PhD student Walter Wu (Psychology) recently won second place and the people's choice awards at this year's Three-Minute Thesis competition run by the Graduate School at UMN. Wu discussed his research, "Pandemic, Visual Impairment, and Social Isolation," and bested PhD students from seven other colleges.
October 2021
Awards
The National Book Foundation announced finalists for the 2021 National Book Awards. Among this year’s selections is Sho (Wave Books) by Assistant Professor Douglas Kearney (English, Creative Writing). The poetry collection explores the complex penetrability of language and black vernacular.
Congratulations to Professor Emeritus John Campbell (Psychology) for receiving the American Psychological Association 2021 John C. Flanagan Lifetime Achievement Award which recognizes career-long achievements in military psychology.
Professor Loukas Karabarbounis (Economics) received this year’s Bernacer Prize, awarded to European economists under the age of 40 who have made outstanding contributions in macroeconomics and finance.
Catherine J. Bruns (PhD candidate, Communication Studies) was part of the summer 2020 RCP Fellows team that partnered with the City of Little Canada to develop best practices for community engagement. As part of her study with Professor Mark Pedelty (Communications Studies) as her faculty adviser, Bruns submitted the project to the MetroLab Student Cup and is one of 12 finalists from 50 submissions.
Professor Saje Mathieu (History) has been selected as a recipient of the 2020 Award for Global Engagement (AGE). This award is given to those faculty and staff whose achievements and contributions to global education, research and engagement are exceptional. The Global Programs and Strategy Alliance established and sponsors the award as part of making internationalization a key academic priority at the University.
Director of Dance & Nadine Jette Sween Professor of Dance Carl Flink (Theatre Arts and Dance) received this year’s Dean’s Medal.
Professor Rich Lee (Psychology) received the Waldfogel Scholar of the College award.
Professor Katharine Gerbner (History) received the Scholar of the College Award.
Fellowships & Grants
Graduate student Casey Giordano (Industrial/Organizational Psychology) was awarded the Meredith P. Crawford Dissertation Fellowship by the Human Resource Research Organization (HumRRO).
Post-doctoral fellow Katherine Tregillus (Psychology) was awarded a grant from the National Eye Institute for her study entitled “Neural mechanisms of long-term plasticity in human visual cortex.”
Graduate student Wen Bu (Psychology) received a grant from The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues for her research on minority group identities and political attitudes.
Professors Stephen Engel and Gordon Legge (Psychology) received a grant from the National Eye Institute for their research on age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
Professor James Lee (Psychology) received a grant for a study titled “Miscellaneous Research on Human Intelligence.” Lee aims to investigate several distinct issues in the study of intelligence through the use of measures of performance such as reaction time. Funded through the Institute of Mental Chronometry, the grant will run from September 2020 to August 2021.
Associate Professor Richard Landers (Psychology) received a grant from the National Science Foundation for research on understanding when and why people do or do not heed recommendations given by artificial intelligence entitled “Integrating Trust and Feedback Intervention Theories to Predict Behavioral Change in Response to Algorithmic Feedback.”
Assistant Professor Nicola Grissom (Psychology) was awarded a grant of more than $ 2 million from the National Institute of Mental Health for her study entitled “Sex-biased impacts of 16p11.2 variants on reward-guided choice.” Grissom will study how sex interacts with genetic variants as they contribute to neuropsychiatric risk, examining genetic factors associated with neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism.
Researcher Yingzi Xiong (Psychology) was recently awarded a K99 career development grant from the National Eye Institute to conduct research on individuals with dual sensory loss. “Dual Sensory Loss: Impact of Vision and Hearing Impairment on Spatial Localization” will focus on the joint impact of vision and hearing loss on the ability to determine the location of objects in the environment.
Teaching Specialist Marsha R. Pitts-Phillips (Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication) and president and founder of MRPP & Associates Communications, LLC, is the recipient of the D. Parke Gibson Award which recognizes a public relations professional who has helped expand awareness of public relations with multicultural communities.
Associate Professor Cheryl Olman (Psychology) is the recipient of the College of Liberal Arts’ Brain Imaging Grant. Researcher Kim Weldon and Olman will study “Investigating Characteristics of Foveal Feedback Using Ultra-High Field fMRI;” the study will use higher signal-to-background noise ratio in an ultra-high field fMRI to investigate how information about the shape of objects in peripheral vision changes the brain's response to objects in the central visual field.
Publications & Creative Activities
The Immigration History Research Center, led by Professor Erika Lee (Asian American Studies), has just launched a new project called Immigrants In COVID America, a resource and website documenting the health, economic, and social impact of COVID-19 on immigrants and refugees in the US.
Assistant Professor Erin L. Durban's (Anthropology) research article, "Anthropology and Ableism," was published in American Anthropologist.
Associate Professor Eric Shook and Professor Steven Manson (Geography, Environment, & Society) will be part of a new national initiative to enable geospatial data-driven scientific discovery to better understand the risks and impacts of climate change.
Associate Professor Elaine Auyoung’s (English and McKnight Land-Grant Professorship) book When Fiction Feels Real: Representation and the Reading Mind (Oxford University Press) is now out in paperback.
Palgrave Macmillan has published the Portuguese edition of Associate Professor Sophia Beal’s (Spanish & Portuguese Studies) The Art of Brasilia: 2000-2019.
September 2021
Awards
Elizabeth Howard (PhD candidate, English) was awarded the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals 2021 VanArsdel Prize for her essay, “'Keeping Christmas' on the Page: The Adelaide Observer, Alice in Wonderland, and the Australian Periodical at Play.”
Monumental Mobility (University of North Carolina Press) by Distinguished McKnight Professor Jean O’Brien (History) won the Winthrop Prize for the Outstanding Book on Seventeenth-Century New England from the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.
Assistant Professor Claire M. Segijn (Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication) was named the most prolific contributing author to the scientific literature on media multitasking according to a new Bibliometric study.
Fellowships and Grants
A team led by Professor Monica Luciana (Psychology) and including Associate Professor Scott Vrieze (Psychology) are working to develop a repository of large datasets that will be accessible to U of M researchers. The project, the Neuroimaging and Genetic Data Resources (NGDR) Initiative, was recently awarded a UMII Seed Grant.
Doctoral candidates Karen Bauer (Anthropology), Ty Frazier (Mathematics), Leah Fulton (minor in African American and African Studies), Vanessa Guzman (American Studies), Samira Musleh (Communication Studies), Kiara Padilla (American Studies), Nathan R. Stenberg (Theatre Arts & Dance), Caty Taborda (Sociology), and Eunha Jeong Wood (Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies) have been named 2021-2022 Leadership in Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity (LEID) Fellows.The Leadership in Equity, Inclusion and Diversity (LEID) Fellowship rewards PhD candidates who have demonstrated a commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and/or social justice through scholarly activity and/or climate enhancing initiatives.
Congratulations to Associate Professor Richard Landers (John P. Campbell Distinguished Professorship of Industrial-Organizational Psychology), for winning HireVue’s Artificial Intelligence in Assessment Fellowship.
Director of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science and Professor Alan Love (Philosophy) is the principal investigator for “Agency, Directionality, and Function: Foundations for a Science of Purpose,” a new three-year, $14.5 million project funded by the John Templeton Foundation.
Associate Professor Scott Vrieze (Psychology) was awarded a grant of $500,000 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). His research includes genetic and environmental influences on psychopathology, especially substance use and abuse in adolescence and early adulthood.
Publications and Creative Activities
Associate Professor Giancarlo Casale (History) has published his book Prisoner of the Infidels: The Memoir of an Ottoman Muslim in 17th Century Europe (The University of California Press). It is described as an “effervescent memoir of war, slavery, and self-discovery, told with aplomb and humor.”
August 2021
Fellowships and Grants
Samuel C. Fletcher (Philosophy) has been awarded a five-year, $442,998 CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop new conceptual foundations for statistical testing and estimation, as they are used in science and medicine.
Doctoral candidate Heider Tun Tun (History) received a fellowship offer with American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). Jessica Molina-Cuthbert (Liberal Arts), who reached the interview stage, received a research stipend.
Assistant Professor Nida Sajid (Asian & Middle Eastern Studies) received a 2021 UMN Sustainable Development Goal Grant.
Publications and Creative Activities
Professor Mary Jo Maynes (History) co-edited Children and Youth as Subjects, Objects, Agents: Innovative Approaches to Research Across Space and Time (Palgrave Macmillan), which was featured on the CCYSC Awazz podcast.
July 2021
Awards
Professor Erika Lee (History and Asian American Studies) has been elected the president-elect of the Organization of American Historians.
Professor Emeritus Charles Baxter (English) has won the 2021 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story.
Professor Phyllis Moen's (Sociology) book Overload won the Max Weber Award for Distinguished Scholarship from the American Sociological Association.
Associate Professor Emily Vraga (Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication) won the Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly award for her article, "Deciding What’s News: News-ness as an Audience Concept for the Hybrid Media Environment."
Fellowships and Grants
Professor Bernard Levinson (Classical and Near Eastern Studies) has accepted two fellowships for the coming year: the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Ellie and Herbert D. Katz Distinguished Fellow; and the Lady Davis Trust Fellowship, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (summer term).
Associate Professor Jack DeWaard (Sociology) has received a Russell Sage Grant for his project, "COVID-19 and Internal Migration across the Urban-Rural Continuum."
Publications and Creative Activities
Lecturer Wendy K.Z. Anderson (Communication Studies) announced the upcoming publication of her book, Rebirthing a Nation: White Women, Racial Politics, and the Internet.
June 2021
Awards
President Gabel has appointed Professor Julie Schumacher (English) as a Regents Professor, the highest honor the University of Minnesota bestows on its faculty.
Assistant Professor Benjamin Toff (Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communiction) has received the 2020 Kaid-Sanders Best Political Communication Article of the Year Award for his work “All the News that’s Fit to Ignore."
Professor Joachim Savelsberg (Sociology) has won the Harry J. Kalven, Jr. Prize from the Law & Society Association, recognizes "empirical scholarship that has contributed most effectively to the advancement of research in law and society" and is given in recognition of a body of scholarly work.
Assistant Professor Douglas Kearney (English) has received the inaugural Campbell Opera Librettist Prize from Opera America.
Fellowships and Grants
The Office of the Vice President for Research has awarded a Minnesota Futures grant to Professor Wilma Koutstaal (Psychology) and Contract Associate Professor Bonnie Klimes-Dougan (Psychology) along with the Medical School's Associate Professor Kathryn Cullen for "Measuring and Enhancing Creativity and Brain Flexibility in Adolescents with Depression."
