The College of Arts & Sciences is proud to announce the winners of this year’s Dean’s Early Career Awards: Megan Connors, assistant professor of physics; Jay Rajiva, assistant professor of English; and Judd Thornton, assistant professor of political science.
Each recipient of the Dean’s Early Career Awards will receive $3,000 in development funds. The award helps the College of Arts and Sciences retain and recruit the best and brightest researchers, scholars and creative artists.
Dr. Connors is a nuclear physicist whose research uses jets to probe sub-atomic particles that existed immediately after the Big Bang. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, New York. She has authored at least 10 peer-reviewed publications in highly respected journals, including a recent article in Review of Modern Physics.
Dr. Rajiva is an internationally-recognized scholar of South Asian and pan-African literature. His book, “Postcolonial Parabola: Literature, Tactility, and the Ethics of Representing Trauma,” analyzes literature of partition and civil war on the Indian subcontinent alongside apartheid and post-apartheid South African fiction. In his next book, “Animism, Trauma, and the Aesthetics of Postcolonial Literature,” he will examine contemporary literature of India and Nigeria.
Dr. Thornton is a scholar of political attitudes and behavior, covering the fields of political psychology, political behavior, and political parties. In recent works, he has looked at partisan ambivalence, ideological constraint, and the influence of political discussion networks. His publications appear in the flagship journals of his fields, including the Journal of Politics.
The Dean’s Early Career Award winners will receive their awards formally at a dinner in their honor on March 1.