2022 GWS and Social Justice Awardees
2022 Graduate Student Prize Winner Sravanthi Dasari Heading link
I am delighted to be chosen to receive this award from the GWS department. I have found GWS to be a space which has nurtured me intellectually and otherwise. It has also been my absolute privilege to be a TA in the department and have the space to interact with the brilliant undergraduate students here.
2022 Undergraduate Student Prize Winner Michael Oliveros Heading link
I am extremely excited to be awarded the GWS Undergraduate Prize! Thank you so much for the recognition, I hope to continue to work hard to connect and uplift the GWS community!
2022 Mary B. Bialas Prize Winner Jayre Vazquez Heading link
For me, this achievement is a way to support my abolitionist activism. And a reminder that we continue to dismantle oppressive structures by creating community and supporting one another. Thank you.
2022 Mary B. Bialas Prize Winner Lynn Darwich Heading link
Lynn is a cultural anthropologist in the making whose research and activism are grounded in queer grassroots organizing and feminist cross-movement building. She dedicated the past decade to realizations of social, economic, racial, ecological, and gender justice. Her research interests are in exploring non-oppressive forms of solidarity and coalition building within and across social movements for justice.
2022 Completion Award Winner Benjamin Schaefer Heading link
I am incredibly grateful to be the recipient of this award to support and finish my dissertation research. The wealth of support that I received from the GWS department is unlike any other department since matriculating to UIC. I am honoured to receive this recognition and hope that one day I will be just as inspirational as the UIC GWS department has been for me.
2022 Kegan Travel Award Winner Krysten Stein Heading link
The Kegan Travel Award will allow me to present two ongoing research projects at the international level — one looking at diversity and visibility for queer and trans content creators and the other examining the gendered televisual of reality television therapy. As a first generation student and a third year PhD student, the award will help me reach one of my goals to present at an international conference.
2022 Kegan Travel Award Winner Ritu Ghosh Heading link
I am delighted to receive this award! I plan to use the award funds for fieldwork I will conduct this summer towards my research project on surrogacy, legality, and corporeality in India.
2022 Kegan Travel Award Winner Sravanthi Dasari Heading link
I am grateful to be given this award which will help me with domestic travel in India towards my fieldwork. My work looks at intimacies within the space of social movements. I will be locating it in Telangana, India and would need to travel to various parts of the state of Telangana. I appreciate the support very much!
2022 Kegan Travel Award Winner Helen Rottier Heading link
The Kegan Travel Award allows me to apply what I have learned in my GWS concentration classes, especially Queer and Feminist Social Movements, and my research on academic oppression and inequity to radically reimagine education systems free from oppression with my comrades at NWSA. I’m looking forward to these critical conversations and connections that will generate further abolitionist and prefigurative political engagement at UIC and beyond!