Faculty | Staff News 2014

Submitted by Arts & Sciences Web Team on

Lecturer Holly Barker was one of five UW faculty mentors honored with an Undergraduate Research Mentor Award in spring 2013. Students who participate in the Undergraduate Research Symposium select the mentors for the award.

Assistant Professor Dan Eisenberg’s paper about the importance of paternal age in reproduction was recommended by “Faculty of 1000” and was also covered by the BBC Science in Italy.

Associate Professor Steven Goodreau has been awarded two new grants from the National Institutes of Health. The first is for a two-year project conducted with colleagues at Emory University, examining the growing disparity in new HIV infections for young Black gay and bisexual men in the US, which are not explainable by any known changes in behavior. The second is a five-year project with colleagues in UW’s Department of Microbiology, to consider how the HIV virus may evolve differently among various affected communities worldwide as HIV treatment is administered earlier and earlier as a way of preventing new transmissions.

Professor Steve Harrell received an Honorable Mention for the Marsha Landoldt Distinguished Mentor Award. He was one of two faculty so recognized out of more than thirty nominated.

Professor Miriam Kahn’s book, Tahiti Beyond the Postcard: Power, Place, and Everyday Life, (UWPress, 2011) was the winner of the 2013 Book Prize (Social Sciences) at the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS), the largest biennial Asia studies event outside the US. Sixty publishers submitted 250 books for two awards: one in Social Sciences and one in Humanities.

Professor Emeritus Charles Keyes recently published Finding Their Voice: Northeastern Villagers and the Thai State (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books; Seattle: UW Press). The book, along with a festschrift honoring Professor Keyes (Ethnicity, Border, and the Grassroots Interface with the State: Studies in Southeast Asia in Honor of Charles F. Keyes, edited by UW Anthropology PhD, John Marston), was launched at an event at UW on April 3, 2014.

Associate Professor Patricia Kramer is one of five faculty members from the entire university selected for the Undergraduate Research Mentor Award in 2014. Awardees are selected from among faculty nominated by students taking part in the Undergraduate Research Symposium.

Lecturer Geoff Kushnick’s research on “Why Do the Karo Batak Prefer Women with Big Feet?” has appeared in several media outlets, such as Human NatureUS NewsThe TelegraphScience DailyKompas (Indonesia), and NBC News.

Associate Professor Celia Lowe has won a fellowship at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, at the University of Munich, Germany. The mission of the Carson Center is "to advance research and discussion concerning the interaction between human agents and nature, and to strengthen the role of the humanities in current political and scientific debates about the environment." She will spend six months in Munich this year.

Celia Lowe, together with Professor Matt Sparke (Geography and JSIS) has won funding for their project on “Climate Change, Global Health, Vulnerability and Resilience: Towards an Area Studies of Risk,” as part of the Mellon-sponsored Area and International Studies Initiative at UW. Their project proposes to bring faculty in area studies into conversation with others from technical and scientific disciplines and departments outside the College of Arts and Sciences around issues of climate change, global health, and vulnerability. They will do this through a symposium, the creation of new course materials, a Jackson School undergraduate Task Force, a workshop for local high school teachers, and a dissemination plan developed in partnership with a widely-watched online global aid and development news site, Humanosphere. The regional foci will be Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.

Professor Emeritus Simon Ottenberg recently published Olayinka: A Woman’s View: The Life of an African Modern Artist (Africa World Press).

Professor Devon Peña was invited by the office of the Governor of Colorado to be a presenter at the Biennial of the Americas international festival in Denver. The Biennial of the Americas is an international festival of art, culture, and ideas. Through four days of public symposia, three days of facilitated peer-to-peer workshops (called clínicas), and seven weeks of engaging artistic projects, the 2013 Biennial examined the significant issues impacting life in the Americas in a nonpartisan, action-focused environment. Professor Peña participated in the clínica “More With Less: Creating a Resilient Water Supply.”

Associate Professor James Pfeiffer has been appointed Executive Director of Health Alliance International, a nongovernmental organization affiliated with the University of Washington that supports governments in strengthening health systems and providing health care for all. He has also been elected to the Executive Board of the Society for Medical Anthropology.

Professor and Chair Janelle Taylor has been elected Secretary of the Society for Medical Anthropology.

Professor Alison Wylie was chosen by the Society of Women in Philosophy as the Distinguished Woman Philosopher for 2013.

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