The German Publishers and Booksellers Association awarded Weatherhead Center Faculty Associate Amartya Sen, Thomas W. Lamont University Professor at Harvard University, the 2020 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. The board of trustees recognizes Sen for his pioneering work on global justice, including social inequality in education and healthcare. 

Cresa Pugh, Graduate Student Associate and PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University and Program in Social Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, is one of five recipients of the 2020 Derek C. Bok Awards for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching of Undergraduates. These awards, established in 2008, recognize the crucial role of graduate students in undergraduate education at Harvard College.  

The American Political Science Association’s Section on Migration and Citizenship awarded two former Academy Scholars their 2020 Best Book prize: Jeffrey S. Kahn, assistant professor of anthropology at UC Davis, for Islands of Sovereignty: Haitian Migration and the Borders of Empire (University of Chicago Press, 2019), and Noora Lori, assistant professor of international relations at Boston University, for Offshore Citizens: Permanent Temporary Status in the Gulf (Cambridge University Press, 2019). 

Faculty Associate Ieva Jusionyte, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University, is the recipient of the 2020 Society for the Anthropology of Work (SAW) Book Prize for her ethnography of emergency workers, Threshold: Emergency Responders on the US-Mexico Border (University of California Press, 2018). SAW recognizes Jusionyte’s accomplishments as “some of the most rigorous, humane, and original fieldwork in the anthropology of work.” 

Academy Scholar Tanushree Goyal, PhD candidate at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, is the winner of the 2020 Kauffman Award. The award is given by the American Political Science Association Section on Class and Inequality to the best paper on inclusion and entrepreneurship. Goyal won the award for her paper, “How Women Mobilize Women into Politics: A Natural Experiment in India.” 

Faculty Associate Alisha Holland, associate professor of government at Harvard University, is the recipient of the 2020 Seligson Prize for her paper, “Diminished Expectations: Redistributive Preferences in Truncated Welfare States,” published by World Politics in October 2018. According to the Princeton Institute of International and Regional Studies, the Seligson Prize is awarded annually to the best scholarship—paper, book, dissertation, or other scholarly work—using AmericasBarometer data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project.

Faculty Associate Sheila S. Jasanoff, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Harvard Kennedy School, is one of the newest members elected into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Every year since 1780, the Academy recognizes exceptionally accomplished individuals across a wide range of professions and disciplines. Jasanoff joins a cohort of more than 250 other artists, scholars, scientists, and leaders in the public, nonprofit, and private sectors.

Faculty Associate Vincent Brown, Charles Warren Professor of American History and professor of African and African American studies at Harvard University, received the 2021 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for his groundbreaking work, Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War (Harvard University Press, 2020). The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, administered every year by the Cleveland Foundation, are the only national juried prize for literature that confronts racism and explores diversity. 

Faculty Associate Paul Kosmin, assistant professor of the classics at Harvard University, was awarded a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship to write a new book provisionally titled The Ancient Shore. The Guggenheim Fellowship Program, established in 1925, awards approximately 175 individuals every year to those with exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. 

Faculty Associate Joshua D. Kertzer, Paul Sack Associate Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University, is the recipient of the 2021 Karl Deutsch Award for his significant contribution to the study of international relations and peace research. Named for Karl Deutsch, the award was established in 1981 to recognize scholars in international relations under age forty, or within ten years of defending their dissertation. 

Faculty Associate Elizabeth Spelke, Marshall L. Berkman Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, is one of four recipients of the 2021 Association for Psychological Science (APS) Mentor Award, which recognizes psychology researchers and educators who have shaped the future directions of science by fostering the careers of students and colleagues. Spelke has helped dozens of mentees launch careers rooted in unique, rich research questions and is known for her expertise on the cognitive capabilities of young children.

Every year, the American Academy of Political Science (AAPSS) inducts a cohort of fellows in recognition of their contributions to the advancement of science and deepening of public understanding of human behavior and social dynamics. Faculty Associate Kathryn Sikkink, Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, is one of five fellows recognized this year for her work on international norms and institutions, transnational advocacy networks, the impact of human rights law and policies, and... Read more about Kathryn Sikkink Elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Faculty Associate Daniel Agbiboa, assistant professor of African and African American studies at Harvard University, was selected to be a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), School of Social Science, at Princeton for the academic year 2021–2022. Each year, approximately twenty-five scholars are selected as members in the School of Social Science, and the theme for next year is “Political Mobilizations and Social Movements.” Agbiboa will spend the year working on a forthcoming book on the #EndSARS movement against police brutality in Nigeria. 

Tom Osborn, former Undergraduate Associate and Harvard ‘20, joins the 2021 class of TED Fellows. The TED Fellows program celebrates its twelfth year with a network of 512 Fellows from 100 countries. TED Fellows are selected for their remarkable achievements, the potential impact of their work, and their commitment to community building. Osborn is the founder of Shamiri, a youth-led organization providing mental health care solutions to teens across Kenya, where clinical depression runs rampant among young people. 

Congratulations to Faculty Associate Michael Kremer, Gates Professor of Developing Societies, Department of Economics at Harvard University, for winning the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2019. He shares the prize with Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the three won “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.” 

The three Laureates use an experiment-based approach to fight global poverty, by breaking down larger problems into smaller and more precise questions. This approach allows them to design more specific experiments among the people most affected. From improving school results in western Kenya to introducing preventive health care subsidies in many countries, the research done by Kremer and his colleagues has measurably helped reduce poverty around the world.