Faculty Honors and Awards | 2017
 

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HISTORY
Craig Wilder delivers the 2017 Capps Memorial Lecture
Wilder, the Barton L. Weller Professor of History, delivered the prestigious Walter H. Capps Memorial Lecture on Friday, November 3, 2017, at the National Humanities Conference in Boston.
Story by SHASS Communications


ANTHROPOLOGY
Professor Stefan Helmreich receives the 2017 Staley Prize for Alien Ocean 
“Some people call this the Pulitzer Prize of anthropology. The prize is selected by an anonymous committee of scholars. It's a very competitive process, there are very intense debates, and this book emerged as a unanimous favorite.”
Story by SHASS Communications


HISTORY
Christopher Capozzola awarded Carnegie Council on International Affairs fellowship
Associate Professor Christopher Capozzola has been awarded a fellowship by the Carnegie Council on International Affairs (CCIA) to support his new research project, “Merchants of Death? The Politics of Defense Contracting, Then and Now.”
Press release at the CCIA


THEATER ARTS
Charlotte Brathwaite wins prestigious FRANKY Award
Theater faculty Charlotte Braithwaite has received the 2017 FRANKY Award, created to recognize an artist who has made a long-term, extraordinary impact on contemporary theater and performance in New York City.
Announcement at the Prelude website


ECONOMICS
Daron Acemoglu receives Doctor Honoris Causa from École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay 
The honor was given on October 6, 2017; on the following day the ENS Paris-Saclay and the Crest laboratory hosted a workshop with Acemoglu, at which he delivered a speech on "Demographics and Robots."Acemoglu is the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at MIT.
Story at ENS


LITERATURE + HISTORY
Alexandre and Padilla awarded Wellesley Newhouse Humanities Center Fellowship
Sandy Alexandre, Professor of Literature, and Tanalís Padilla, Associate Professor of History, have been been awarded year-long fellowships by the Newhouse Humanities Center Fellowship at Wellesley College to support the completion of their next books. 
Profiles at the Newhouse Humanities Center


SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY
Sherry Turkle a finalist for biennial Thinkers50 awards
Turkle, the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology, is one of seven members of the MIT community who were named to the shortlist for the biennial Thinkers50 awards. 
Story at MIT Sloan


LITERATURE
Wyn Kelley receives a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities
Wyn Kelley, Senior Lecturer of Literature and founding member of the Melville Society Cultural Project, has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities to be a lead faculty member for “Herman Melville’sMoby-Dick and the World of Whaling in the Digital Age.”
Story at MIT Literature


POLITICAL SCIENCE
Hidalgo, de Oliveira, and Canello win James Caporaso Best Paper award
"Can politicians police themselves? Natural experimental evidence from Brazil’s audit courts," co-authored by MIT political scientists Danny Hidalgo, Renato Lima de Oliveira, and Julio Canello, has been selected for the James Caporaso Best Paper award for the best paper to appear in Comparative Political Studies in 2016.
Read the article


SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY
Sherry Turkle a finalist for biennial Thinkers50 awards
Sherry Turkle, Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology, is one of seven members of the MIT community were named this week to the shortlist for the biennial Thinkers50 awards.
Story at MIT Sloan


POLITICAL SCIENCE
Jeremy Ferwerda PhD ’15 wins 2017 Gabriel A. Almond Award
Ferwerda is the winner of this year’s Gabriel A. Almond Prize for the best dissertation in the field of comparative politics. His research looks into the effects of European local governments’ discretion over redistributive policy over the past thirty years.
Story at Political Science Now


PHILOSOPHY
Professor Steriade named Professor Honoris Causa of the University of Bucharest 
The academic board of the Faculty of Letters decided unanimously to bestow the honorary title upon Steriade, an MIT Professor of Linguistics.
University of Bucharest
 

ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE
Acemoglu, Stewart, and Nielsen receive high-profile Carnegie Fellowships 
MIT economist Daron Acemoglu and political scientists Richard Nielsen and Charles Stewart III have been named 2017 Andrew Carnegie Fellows, and will receive up to $200,000 each to support a research sabbatical. Acemoglu, Nielsen, and Stewart are each pursuing long-term scholarly projects relating to political institutions, authority, and legitimacy.
Story by Peter Dizikes at MIT News
 

DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
Esther Duflo and five other MIT professors elected to the National Academy of Sciences 
Duflo is a co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). In her research, she seeks to understand the economic lives of the poor, with the aim of helping design and evaluate social policies. Her work engages her in issues of health, education, financial inclusion, environment, and governance. In addition to Duflo, Professors Bell, Bhatia, Cummins, Jensen, and Mavalvala were honored for research achievements.
Story at MIT News
 

WRITING
Anita Desai receives 2017 Blue Metropolis International Literary Grand Prix 
Desai, author and Professor Emerita of Humanities at MIT received the award at a ceremony on April 29, in Montreal. This prize is awarded each year to a world renowned author in recognition of a lifetime of literary achievement.
Story
 

POLITICAL SCIENCE
David Singer receives an inaugural MIT Change Maker Award 
Singer, Associate Professor of Political Science, and Associate Head of MacGregor House, received the award for his work chairing the Presidential Committee on Sexual Misconduct Prevention and Response. Singer spearheaded the effort to ensure all faculty and staff receive training on sexual misconduct prevention as well as how to respond to a student who discloses a sexual misconduct incident.
Story at MIT News


GLOBAL STUDIES & LANGUAGES
Catherine Clark receives Mellon Fellowship
Catherine Clark has received the Mellon Fellowship for Assistant Professors at the Institute for Advanced Study, for 2017–2018 
Story 
 

SECURITY STUDIES PROGRAM
Barry Posen receives the 2017 ISSS Distingiushed Scholar Award 
Director of MIT Security Studies Program, Barry Posen, received the 2017 Distinguished Scholar Award of the International Security Studies section of the International Studies Association, an award recognizing lifetime achievements in both research and mentorship. 
Story at SSP website
 

ANTHROPOLOGY
Stefan Helmreich's Alien Ocean receives 2017 Staley Prize from the School for Advanced Research
"Often called the 'Pulitzer Prize of anthropology,' the Staley Prize is an annual $10,000 award given to a book that represents the best writing and scholarship in anthropology."
Story at SAR


PHILOSOPHY
Caspar Hare named a 2017 MacVicar Faculty Fellow
"Professor Hare’s patience and mindfulness in ensuring everyone’s complete and thorough understanding of questions at hand are unparalleled," reads one nomination typical of many received from Hare's students.
Story by Elizabeth Durant at MIT News
 

ECONOMICS
Daron Acemoglu wins BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award 
Acemoglu, the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at MIT, has won the distinguished BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award for Economics, Finance, and Management, in honor of his prolific research that has helped reshape his discipline over the last two decades.
Story by Peter Dizikes at MIT News
 

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY
Sherry Turkle receives USC Annenberg’s Everett M. Rogers Award 
Turkle studies the effects on human relationships of digital technology, including the personal computer, social networks, mobile connectivity, and artificial intelligence.
Story | Sherry Turkle's website
 

COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES / WRITING
Junot Díaz inducted into American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters has announced 14 new inductees, including Junot Díaz, a Pulitizer prize-winning author and the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at MIT.
More | Junot Díaz's website
 

COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES / WRITING
Alan Lightman receives inaugural Humanism in Literature Award
The Humanist Hub has named Lightman its first ever awardee for Humanism through Literature.
Story by SHASS Communications
 

COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES / WRITING
Vivek Bald awarded Levitan Prize in the Humanities + Whiting Fellowship  
The Levitan research grant will support Bald's work on a film and a website documenting South Asian Muslims who immigrated to the United States between the 1890s and 1940s. Bald has also received a Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship award for work on the same project.
Story by SHASS Communications


COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES
Terrascope Radio documentary wins national award 
MIT students’ personal account of desert farming in New Mexico earns top honors from college broadcasting association. 
Story at MIT News


ECONOMICS
Noam Angrist '13 named to 2017 Forbes 30Under30 list
Angrist, the co-founder of the Botswana-based NGO, Young 1ove, is among the MIT students, faculty, staff, and alumni honored in "the most definitive gathering of today’s leading young change-makers and innovators."
Story at MIT News | Young 1ove website
 

HISTORY
Ekmekçioğlu and Bilal awarded grant in support of Armenian feminism project
The Gulbenkian Foundation of Portugal has awarded MIT historian Lerna Ekmekçioğlu and MIT visiting scholar Melissa Bilal a $20,000 grant in support of their book and a companion website project on feminism in Armenian. The project's ambitious digital humanities component is being developed in collaboration with the American University in Armenia’s digital library and MIT Libraries’ Digital Humanities section.
Ekmekçioğlu webpage | Bilal webpage | Gulbenkian Foundation