Awards
Graduate student Ria Gualano received a Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies Dissertation Innovation Fellowship. The program supports 45 doctoral students in the humanities and social sciences pursuing innovative approaches to dissertation research, including new methodologies, formats, and collaborations with community partners beyond the academy. This is a highly competitive award. Fellows are chosen from a pool of nearly 900 applicants through a rigorous peer-review process drawing on the expertise of more than 150 scholars. Ria will receive a $42,000 stipend, $2000 to support external mentorship, and as much as $8000 for project-related costs. Her research explores the forms, parameters, and opportunities of disability arts and virtual reality storytelling through field research and a participatory disability and neurodiversity arts exhibition integrated with cutting-edge immersive technologies. Grounded in disability theory, the exhibition highlights authentic representations in collaboration with disabled and neurodiverse people in the local community. Drawing on perspectives from communication, feminist disability studies, computer and information science, art history, and museum studies, the project examines how art, immersive technologies, curators, artists, and visitors co-construct disability narratives.
Ria also received an Exemplary Leadership & Service Award: Early Career Graduate Students (individual category) awarded by the Graduate School Office of Inclusion and Student Engagement. The award recognizes Ria’s two years co-chairing the MAC Peer Mentoring Program. With 40–60 participants a year, the mentorship program helps new graduate students across the university identify, form, and strengthen community at Cornell by engaging them in regular events and pairing them with peer mentors who are in their second year of graduate school and beyond.
Graduate student Ellie Homant received the Christine Ye Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award from the Cornell Center for Teaching Innovation. Pictured below, Senior Lecturer Michelle LaVigne, Ellie, and Associate Professor Brooke Duffy gathered for a photo at the CTI reception celebrating Ellie’s award.
Grants
Graduate student Amanda Vilchez received an International Research Travel Grant from the Einaudi Center for International Studies. The $2000 grant will support her dissertation research in the Sacred Valley of Cusco, Peru. This participatory study examines the social dimensions and implications of preserving the traditional use of vampire bat guano in maize cultivation.
Invited Lectures
On April 30, Associate Professor Neil Lewis, Jr., delivered a lecture entitled “Mobilizing Diverse Coalitions to Advance Health Equity” to the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Neil spoke about recent findings from both the Collaborative on Media & Messaging for Health and Social Policy and the Action Research Collaborative that highlight the reality that members of groups that are often overlooked in research are among the most willing to do the work that is necessary to advance health equity. In addition, he spoke about ways that universities can engage with publics more effectively to both advance knowledge and improve health and other societal outcomes.
Publications
Associate Professor Neil Lewis, Jr., Research Associate Norman Porticella,…Professor Jeff Niederdeppe, April 2025, “Beyond Fear of Backlash: Effects of Messages about Structural Drivers of COVID-19 Disparities among Large Samples of Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White Americans,” Social Science & Medicine. The research was featured in the Cornell Chronicle article “Those Most Willing to Address Health Disparities Tend to Be Overlooked.”
The authors tested the effects of messages about structural drivers of health disparities (specifically COVID-19 disparities) among large samples of Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White Americans. They found that people of color were consistently more willing to engage in individual and collective efforts to address health disparities than their White counterparts. Moreover, they did not find evidence of backlash against messages discussing structural drivers of disparities (contrary to frequent claims about the dangers of talking about racial inequality).
Graduate student Rosie Nguyen, April 2025, book review of Sex Work in Popular Culture (Lauren Kirshner), Cultural Studies.
Rosie published a book review of Sex Work in Popular Culture, which explores how media representations of sex workers have moved from marginalizing and stigmatizing them to viewing their work as empowering, offering financial stability and bodily autonomy. In her review, Rosie links Kirshner’s analysis to feminist media studies, emphasizing how changing portrayals of sex work reflect tensions within feminist paradigms and how the book presents sex workers as multidimensional individuals with various forms of labor, internal struggles, and efforts to balance their unregulated work.
