The 2021 Faculty Research Awards go to 12 UO scholars

Twelve UO researchers and scholars pursuing research on subjects ranging from rock and roll music to data science to COVID-19 have received 2021 Faculty Research Awards.

Distributed annually by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation, Faculty Research Awards support scholarship, creative projects and quantitative or qualitative research from all disciplinary backgrounds.

“These awards boost promising research, scholarship and creative projects, and I’m pleased that many of this year’s awards went to junior faculty,” said Cass Moseley, interim vice president for research and Innovation. “We congratulate all of this year’s awardees and look forward to seeing the results of their work.”

Awards went to researchers and scholars in anthropology, architecture and history of architecture, cinema studies, data science, English, history, journalism, music, romance languages, and women's, gender and sexuality studies.

Faculty members receive up to $7,000 for research expenses during the coming fiscal year, to be spent on 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 tenure track faculty members 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 merit of the proposals and furnished their recommendations and rankings to the interim vice president for research and innovation.

The 2021 Faculty Research Award recipients are:

  • Emily Beck, assistant research professor in data science, Office of the Provost, “Threespine Stickleback Fish: A New Model for Mitochondrial Diseases.”
  • Annelise Heinz, assistant professor, Department of History, “Book project: Collective: How Lesbian Feminists Reimagined Society.”
  • Maile Hutterer, associate professor, Department of History of Art and Architecture, “Architecture in the Medieval Imagination-Chapter 2, ‘Place.’”
  • Masami Kawai, assistant professor, Department of Cinema Studies, “Feature Film: Valley of the Tall Grasses.”
  • Wonkak Kim, assistant professor of clarinet, School of Music and Dance, “Creating New Medium through Intercultural Collaboration: Performances, commercial CD, and videography, featuring original compositions for clarinet and chamber ensemble of western and Korean traditional instruments.”
  • Leah Lowthorp, assistant professor, Department of Anthropology, “Deep Cosmopolitanism: Kutiyattam, Dynamic Tradition, and National/Global Heritage in Kerala, India.”
  • Drew Nobile, assistant professor of music theory, School of Music and Dance, “Voicing Form in Rock and Pop, 1991–2020.”
  • Johanna Richlin, assistant professor, Department of Anthropology, “Fear, Hope, and Potentiality: An Ethnographic Study of Vaccine Hesitancy in the time of Covid-19.”
  • Kory Russel, assistant professor, Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Studies Program, “Water and Sanitation Services in Homeless Encampments for Improved Environmental and Public Health Outcomes: A Pilot.”
  • Yvette Saavedra, assistant professor, Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, “Living La Mala Vida/Living the Bad Life: Transgressive Femininities, Morality, and Nationalism in Nineteenth Century California, 1800-1850.”
  • Lawrence Sugiyama, professor, Department of Anthropology, “Traditional Ecological Knowledge Transmission among Foragers of the Gran Chaco.”
  • Courtney Thorsson, associate professor, Department of English, “The Sisterhood: Black Women's Literary Organizing.”