June 11, 2025
Faculty/staff honors: Innovation grant, best paper, outstanding research award
Recent recognition of the University of Washington includes an EarthLab Innovation Grant, the Best Paper Award from American Political Science Association and honorable recognition mention from the American Society for Theatre Research.University of Washington
Recent recognition of the University of Washington includes an EarthLab Innovation Grant, the Best Paper Award from American Political Science Association and honorable recognition mention from the American Society for Theatre Research.
UW professor Richard Watts and team awarded EarthLab Innovation Grant
Richard Watts, UW associate professor of French, is part of an interdisciplinary team from the UW that received an EarthLab Innovation Grant to support their collaborative project, “Life in Spite of It All: Water, Wetlands, and Reclamation in a Changing Climate.”
The $80,000 grant, awarded through EarthLab’s 2024–25 funding cycle, supports a team that also includes additional members of the UW faculty: Meghan Halabisky, remote-sensing scientist in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, and Danny Hoffman, professor of international studies and director of the Jackson School of International Studies. Independent wetlands scholar and visual artist Maureen Ryan rounds out the team. The project focuses on documenting climate change and cultural resilience in a threatened wetlands region of the Senegal River Valley in southwestern Mauritania.
“This grant enabled our Seattle-based research and filmmaking team to conduct a second site visit to the region,” Watts said. “The footage the team gathered is now being edited for a documentary film that explores the environmental and human stakes of a disappearing landscape.”
Political science faculty honored for research on religion, policy and economic discrimination
Asli Cansunar, UW associate professor of political science, received the Weber Best Paper in Religion and Politics Award from the American Political Science Association’s (APSA) Religion & Politics Section.
The award honors the best paper presented at the previous year’s APSA Annual Meeting that exemplifies the section’s mission: encouraging the study of the interrelations between religion and politics. Recipients are recognized for addressing timely and relevant topics in a theoretically innovative and methodologically rigorous way.
Cansunar was recognized for her co-authored work, “Homogenizing the High Street: The Economic Cleansing of Minority Elites through Fiscal Discrimination,” which explores the complex interplay between faith and policy. She sees the award as a meaningful affirmation of her scholarship in a field that is continuously evolving.
“Receiving this award recognizes my work on the interplay between faith and policy,” she said. “This recognition encourages further thoughtful analysis of the intersection between religion and politics, both within academia and beyond.”
Theatre professor Stefka Mihaylova earns recognition for debut monograph
Stefka Mihaylova, UW associate professor of theatre theory and criticism, received honorable mention for the Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History from the American Society for Theatre Research.
The Barnard Hewitt Award honors exceptional research and scholarship in theatre history and is one of the most prestigious recognitions in the field. The honorable mention highlights Mihaylova’s debut monograph, “Viewers in Distress: Race, Gender, Religion, and Avant-Garde Performance at the Turn of the 21st Century.”
In the book, Mihaylova examines how avant-garde performance art engages with identity, faith and social distress, offering new insights into the political power of live performance.
“This is an award for my first monograph Viewers in Distress: Race, Gender, Religion, and Avant-Garde Performance at the Turn of the 21st Century,” Mihaylova said.
Tag(s): Asli Cansunar • College of Arts & Sciences • Danny Hoffman • Department of French & Italian Studies • Department of Political Science • EarthLab • Jackson School of International Studies • Megan Halabisky • Richard Watts • School of Drama • Stefka Mihaylova