Winners pictured, clockwise beginning with upper left: Dahlia Ramirez, Noa Emi, Danielle Wallner, Hannah Laffer, Yair Berzofsky, Adah Anderson, Gustavo Nascimento, and Irina Znamirowski.
The Brandeis Library's Research Excellence Prize recognizes students who apply sophisticated information literacy skills to the selection, evaluation, and synthesis of sources for a research project. The 2024 winners were selected from a pool of outstanding student submissions in nine categories:
- Community-engaged research: Adah Anderson, Examining Reentry in Massachusetts: Perspectives from System-Impacted People and Those Working in Reentry
“This project has taught me that sometimes when conducting research, you need to adapt and change your approach to the process. For me, this often took the form of finding new ways to speak to incarcerated people, a population I deemed to be integral to my work but also unfortunately, very controlled and hidden from the public. Throughout this research, I adapted to conversing with many from this community online and was happy to speak to a few over the phone, despite my initial aim being to meet with each person individually and in person. More than anything, this project showed me that sometimes the processes in place that limit your ability to conduct research are results in and of themselves, as my work demonstrated that Massachusetts DOC regulations for corresponding with those inside prison are made to seclude this population from those on the outside. Overall, the library resources helped me immensely throughout this research project and others I have completed in the past.” -Adah Anderson
- Student research related to racism and anti-racism: Noa Emi, Exilic Intimacy: Scenes of Erotic Performance and the Metaphysics of Rape
“noa's essay constitutes an extended and important discussion of incest and rape in two Caribbean novels. noa marshals sometimes quite difficult theoretical arguments to connect abuse in the present to past and ongoing implications of violent colonial patriarchy for constructions of masculinity and femininity for the descendants of African enslavement and South Asian indentureship: these are questions that persist into the present. noa both sifts through and constructs a convincing theoretical argument, and applies it carefully to well-selected portions of both novels.” -Faith Smith, Marta F. Kauffman Chair in African and African American Studies and Professor of English
- Climate change-related research: Hannah Laffer, Quantifying Climate Shifts Across Chilean Landscapes from the Andes to the Pacific and Atacama to Patagonia
"Hannah put a huge amount of effort into her senior thesis about climate change in Chile over the past 4 decades. In particular, I was impressed with how she managed to wrangle a ton of climatic data from across the country, including temperature, precipitation, wind and sea surface temperature. Getting some of this data even required her to request it from the Chilean Navy! She then essentially taught herself how to code in R." -Sally Warner, Associate Professor of Climate Science
- Research completed in a University Writing Seminar (UWS): Dahlia Ramirez, How To Make Death Fun: Tyler Feder’s Genius In Dancing At The Pity Party
"Dahlia's UWS paper represents research and writing at the highest level. Dahlia explores color theory and the psychology of grief through her original analysis of Dancing at the Pity Party, a powerful but understudied graphic memoir. Dahlia challenges conventional attitudes around ‘teenage’ and ‘adult’ literature, and persuasively argues that bright colors, simplistic compositions, and humor are appropriate elements for comics about 'serious' topics." -Rafael Abrahams, University Writing Seminar Instructor and PhD Student in History
- Research completed by an undergraduate student outside of UWS: Gustavo Nascimento, Gardens - A Vessel For Self-Fashioning
"This project has taught me that sometimes when conducting research, you need to adapt and change your approach to the process. For me, this often took the form of finding new ways to speak to incarcerated people, a population I deemed to be integral to my work but also unfortunately, very controlled and hidden from the public. Throughout this research, I adapted to conversing with many from this community online and was happy to speak to a few over the phone, despite my initial aim being to meet with each person individually and in person. More than anything, this project showed me that sometimes the processes in place that limit your ability to conduct research are results in and of themselves, as my work demonstrated that Massachusetts DOC regulations for corresponding with those inside prison are made to seclude this population from those on the outside. Overall, the library resources helped me immensely throughout this research project and others I have completed in the past." -Gustavo Nascimento
- Research completed for an undergraduate senior thesis: Irina Znamirowski, Beyond the Character: An Examination of Dissimulation and Metatheatre in Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Hamlet
“This was a philosophical-literary thesis, but Irina also used as primary source the Brandeis First Folio which helped her make a central argument about interaction between characters on the interestingly relevant basis of line layouts — e.g. whether lines seemed to be shared between two speakers or whether one speaker was completely done before the second speaker began.” -William Flesch, Professor of English
- Research completed by a graduate student: Danielle Wallner, The Silent Women of the Future: A Comparative Case Study of Female Representation and Futurism in Early Science Fiction Films
"She uncovered major silent film sources, some of which are shockingly provocative both for Russia and Italy. Her work is deep, digitally grounded, and highly original." - Alice A. Kelikian, Associate Professor of History
- Research that makes use of materials in the Brandeis University Archives & Special Collections: Abigail Roberts, Brandeis' First Folio: Ownership, Observation, and Opportunities
"This was a wonderful use of Brandeis's resources--a senior essay about our First Folio, in which Abby took full advantage of the archive and its opportunities for her to understand something important about Shakespeare's publication history and reception. She studied the Folio and its digital copy very carefully, and brought new attention to this amazing resource." Ramie Targoff, Jehuda Reinharz Professor in the Humanities
- Digital research project: Yair Berzofsky, unfinished.wav
"Yair is a master at digital photography, lighting, set design and music." -Alice A. Kelikian, Associate Professor of History
Congratulations to all of the winners!
