Spring honors and awards

Stanton Wheeler Mentorship Award

Laura Beth Nielsen, professor of sociology and director of Legal Studies at Northwestern University, has been awarded the Stanton Wheeler Mentorship Award by the Law and Society Association (LSA). The award is given to an outstanding mentor of graduate, professional or undergraduate students working on issues of law and society.

According to the LSA, Nielsen, also an American Bar Foundation (ABF) scholar, was awarded for her exemplary record of mentorship at Northwestern, the ABF and within the broader law and society community. As director of the Center for Legal Studies at Northwestern, Nielsen involves undergraduate and graduate students in research projects and provides mentorship that has led her students to prestigious Ph.D. programs and teaching positions. ​

2018 Conflict Research Society Book of the Year

Ana Arjona, assistant professor of political science, has won the 2018 Conflict Research Society Book of the Year Prize for "Rebelocracy: Social Order in the Colombian Civil War" (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Arjona’s work was singled out for its contribution to conflict/peace studies, impact and methodological rigor. The book was praised as a “truly innovative and unique study” that “shed light on another under-explored area — that of social order during civil wars, non-state actor governance, and the dynamics of combatant-civilian interaction.” 

 

Arjona, who joined Northwestern in 2012, studies violence and conflict, the foundations of political order, state building, local governance, drug trafficking and drug policy. Her current research projects investigate the causes and consequences of institutional change and individual agency in contexts of violence. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Colombia and has also carried field research in Kosovo. At Northwestern, she teaches on civil war, research design and the relation between illegal drugs and politics. Her work has been funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, SSRC, the United States Institute of Peace, Yale University and Columbia University; the International Development Research Centre in Canada; the Folke Bernadotte Academy in Sweden; and the Department for International Development and the Economic and Social Research Council in the United Kingdom.

 

2018 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award

Danna Freedman, assistant professor of chemistry, has been selected to receive the 2018 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. This awards program is supported by the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation, established to advance the science of chemistry, chemical engineering and related sciences as a means of improving human relations and circumstances throughout the world.  It recognizes talented young faculty in the chemical sciences who demonstrate leadership in research and education. Freedman is being recognized for her personal commitment to excellent teaching, innovative research and the personal growth of her students in the chemical sciences.