December 2017 Kudos

December 12, 2017

Jordan Amirkhani, MA ’10, received an Arts Writers Grant for short-form writing about contemporary art.

Joel Blecher authored the book Said the Prophet of God: Hadith Commentary Across the Millennium (University of California Press, 2017). He was also awarded a 2018-2019 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. 

Maggie Contreras, BA ’06, produced the documentary feature Gilbert.

Kavita Daiya was awarded the University of Pennsylvania South Asia Center's Affiliated Faculty Fund Grant for 2017-2018.

Ana Maria del Rio Gonzalez received a $238,001 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services/National Institutes of Health to examine PrEP use among Latina immigrant transgender women in the D.C.-metropolitan area.

Arie Dubnov published the essay "Between Scylla and Charybdis: On Colin Shindler’s Respublica Hebraeorum" in The Israel Studies Review.

David Ensor moderated a discussion on "America's Role in the World" with Senators Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) at the annual World Affairs Council Conference in Washington, D.C.

Mark T. Esper, PhD ’08, was confirmed by the United States Senate as the 23rd Secretary of the Army.

Jody Ganiban received a $587,449 award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services/National Institutes of Health for her work on “The Early Growth and Development Study Pediatric Cohort.”

Sara Goldrick-Rab, BA ’98, won the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Education for her research and advocacy on behalf of low-income students. She donated the $100,000 prize to the Faculty And Students Together (FAST) Fund.

Sylvain Guiriec was awarded the 2017 Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal from NASA for his work on Gamma Ray Bursts and their use as cosmological probes.

Valentina Harizanov and Jozef H. Przytycki co-authored the article “Proceedings of Knots in Dallas II, 2015, Volume II” in the Journal of Knot Theory and its Ramifications with Mieczyslaw Dabkowski, PhD ’03, Radmila Sazdanovic, MA ’08, PhD ’10, and Adam Sikora, MA ’97.

Kerric Harvey was appointed the inaugural Visiting Fellow for New Research Methods at the Centre for Imaginative Ethnography.

Daniel Hayes was awarded a $5,000 grant from the Charles Koch Foundation for his dissertation.

Former U.S. Representative Steve Israel, BA ’81,was featured in a C-SPAN2 discussion.

Chryssa Kouveliotou was awarded a $119,899 grant from NASA-Goddard LOC for her work on Magnetar Observations with the Fermi/Gamma Ray Burst Monitor.

Undergraduates Taylor Kane and Shira Strongin were winners of teen advocacy awards from the EveryLife Foundation. 

Michael Landish, PhD ’11, published the article in "A Proposal to Change the Words We Use When Talking About the Civil War" in The Smithsonian Magazine.

Huynh-Nhu (Mimi) Le was awarded a $45,862 contract from Children’s Hospital National Medical Center and the J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation for her work in integrating mental health care in obstetrics settings.

Steven Livingston spoke at a round table on “Media and Mass Atrocity” at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Maria del Carmen Montoya received a Knight Foundation award for her American Riad project. She was also selected for the first cohort of the Artist Campaign School.

History PhD candidate Ryan Musto authored the article “North Korea Might Not Denuclearize, But the US Senate Should” in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Justin Plakas’ work is featured in the inaugural Activatar exhibition.

Ethan Porter co-authored the report “Sex Trafficking, Russian Infiltration, Birth Certificates, and Pedophilia: A Survey Experiment Correcting Fake News” on the Social Science Research Network.

Nina Seavey won Best Documentary Feature at the Golden Gate International Film Festival for the film The Messengers.

James Sham received a $5,000 award from the National Academy of Sciences for his “Empathy Mirror” project.

Lara Sheehi won the 2017 Gradiva Award for Best Article for co-authoring “Enactments of otherness and searching for a third space in the Palestine-Israel matrix” in the journal Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society.

Janet Steele moderated three sessions at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival.

Gregory Squires co-authored the book Meltdown: The Financial Crisis, Consumer Protection, and the Road Forward (Praeger, 2017) and edited The Fight for Fair Housing: Causes, Consequences and Future Implications of the 1968 Federal Fair Housing Act (Routledge, 2017).

Cheryl W. Thompson presented at the 10th Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC).

Gayle Wald and history PhD student Michael Tune spoke on "Myths of Desegregation: Reconsidering Lisner Auditorium's Place in the Racial Justice Lore of Washington, D.C." at the 44th Annual Conference on D.C. History.

Kaitlin Yarnall, MA ’08, was named vice president, media innovation, at the National Geographic Society.

Silvio Waisbord gave the keynote address "Communication: A Post-Discipline" at the 40th Anniversary of the Master’s Program in Communication at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.

The University Writing Program was awarded the "Writing Program Certificate of Excellence" from the Conference of College Composition and Communication.