The 2020 Faculty Research Awards go to 23 UO scholars

UO researchers and scholars examining everything from international indigenous activism to creative aging to the creation of original electroacoustic music have received 2020 Faculty Research Awards.

Faculty Research Awards are distributed annually by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation. Designed to stimulate promising research and scholarly activity, the awards support scholarship, creative projects and quantitative or qualitative research from all disciplinary backgrounds.

“We had a really diverse pool of applicants and are proud to fund so many different lines of research and scholarship,” said David Conover, vice president for research and innovation. “We congratulate the awardees and commend them on their outstanding work.”

Awards went to researchers and scholars in architecture, music, language arts, journalism, psychology, anthropology, geography, history, management, special education and other fields.

Faculty members receive up to $7,000 for research expenses during the coming fiscal year, including travel, equipment, supplies, contractual services, shared facility use, graduate or undergraduate student effort, or stipends during the summer months.

Award applications were open to all faculty members with a rank of assistant professor or above, as well as full-time, non-tenure-track faculty members engaged in substantial research. A committee of UO faculty members appointed by the University Senate provided peer review of the intellectual merit of the proposals and furnished their recommendations and rankings to the vice president for research and innovation.

The 2020 Faculty Research Award recipients:

  • Shankha Chakraborty, professor, Department of Economics, “Women, Work and the Family: The Curious case of India's Female Labor Force Participation.”
  • Tara Fickle, assistant professor, Department of English, “Behind Aiiieeeee!: A New History of Asian American Literature.”
  • Scott Fitzpatrick, professor, Department of Anthropology, “On the Shoals of Giants: Archaeological Investigation of Threatened Prehistoric Sites in the Southern Caribbean.”
  • Akiko Hatakeyama, assistant professor, School of Music and Dance, “Original Compositions of Electroacoustic Music by Akiko Hatakeyama (CD release).”
  • Gina Herrmann, associate professor, Department of Romance Languages, “Rivesaltes: The French Concentration Camps and the Laboratory of 20th Century Internment.”
  • Jina Kim, assistant professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, “Amplifying Voices: Auditory Texts in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945.”
  • Patricia Lambert, professor, Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management, “Arts Education and Cultural Engagement for Creative Aging.”
  • Henry Luan, assistant professor, Department of Geography, “How does socioeconomic inequality impact opioid overdose deaths in the U.S.?: A multi-scale Bayesian spatiotemporal modeling approach.”
  • Audrey Lucero, associate professor, Department of Education Studies, “Crossing Borders: The Perspectives of Transnational Students in Oregon High Schools.”
  • Kiersten Muechinger, associate professor, Department of Product Design, “Framing “Natural” Materials through Product Color and Finish.”
  • James Muruthi, assistant professor, Department of Counseling Psychology and Human Services, “Secondary Data Analysis of Health-related Quality of Life (HRQOL) in Older Oregonian Caregivers: Gender Differences and the Impact of Social Support.”
  • Hajo Neis, associate professor, Department of Architecture, “THE SUGAR IN THE MILK - A Refugee Pattern Language RPL Draft.”
  • Jennifer O’Neal, assistant professor, Department of Indigenous, Race and Ethnic Studies, “Beyond the Trail of Broken Treaties: International Indigenous Activism, 1972-1980.”
  • Dorothee Ostmeier, professor, Department of German and Scandinavian, “Singularity in Fiction and Virtual Technologies."
  • Jennifer Presto, associate professor, Department of Comparative Literature, "Adjacent Ecologies: Russian-American Artists in the Pacific Northwest."
  • Alan Rempel, professor, Department of Earth Sciences, “Experimental Validation of Premelting Controls on Subglacial Temperatures.”
  • Stephen Rodgers, professor, School of Music and Dance, “The Songs of Clara Schumann.”
  • Geovanna Rodriguez, assistant professor, Department of Special Education and Clinical Sciences, “School climate and mental health outcomes in adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).”
  • Hudson Sessions, assistant professor, Department of Management, “Motivated to Misjudge the Money: A Study of the Financial Perceptions and Outcomes of Ride-Share Drivers.”
  • Samantha Shune, assistant professor, Department of Special Education and Clinical Sciences, “Validation of the CARES questionnaire: Screening for dysphagia-related caregiver burden.”
  • Matt Streisfeld, Department of Biology/Institute of Ecology and Evolution, “Modern genomic solutions to an old problem: the role of natural selection and genetic drift in adaptation.”
  • Frances White, professor, Department of Anthropology, “Do Bonobos share more: does social and sexual intimacy mean more shared microbiomes?”
  • Juan Eduardo Wolf, associate professor, School of Music and Dance, “An Ethnographic Study of Afro-descendant Music-Dance Performance in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico.”