The University of
Delaware recognized 10 doctoral students from the graduating classes of
2020 and 2021 with dissertation prizes for outstanding work in their
field of study. The awards were announced during the Doctoral Hooding Ceremony held Thursday, May 27, 2021, on UD’s Newark campus.
Dissertations showcase a student’s original contributions to their
field of study and highlight the potential impact of their work to the
world. Each year, several students distinguish themselves among their
peers for exhibiting the highest scholarly excellence.
These 10 distinguished scholars conducted research spanning a variety
of fields, from preservation studies to computer science, chemistry,
history, English, engineering and more. The honorees were:
Class of 2020--Maria João Petisca (preservation studies), Alexandra Turano (psychological and brain sciences), Ayush Dusia (computer science), Michael Metz (physics) and Kelly Mulholland (bioinformatics and systems biology).
Class of 2021--Carrie Glenn (history), Ángela Bohórquez Oviedo (political science and international relations), Ryan McDonough (biomedical engineering), William Lambert (chemistry and biochemistry) and Matthew Rinkevich (English).
Read on to learn about their work.
Wilbur Owen Sypherd Prize in Humanities
Maria João Petisca earned the 2020 Wilbur Owen Sypherd Prize
in Humanities for her dissertation, Investigations into Chinese Export
Lacquerware: Black and Gold, 1700-1850. Petisca's research combines
material sciences, history of collecting and material culture studies.
She traversed four continents and collaborated with expert scientists
and scholars in multiple countries to evaluate 18th- and 19th-century
Chinese lacquerware spanning 300 years. Her investigation revealed
unknown scientific data in historical manufacturing of lacquerware in
Qing-dynasty China, which in turn allowed her to revise pre-existing
arguments about the rise and decline of Chinese export lacquerware in
the global trade history. Vimalin Rujivacharakul, chair of Petisca’s
dissertation committee and an associate professor of art history, called
her work a true blend of humanities and sciences that “revises our
understanding about Chinese export lacquerware and successfully reframes
the cultural history of Chinese export objects.”
Carrie Glenn earned the 2021 Wilbur Owen Sypherd Prize in
Humanities for her work, titled The Revolutionary Atlantic of Elizabeth
Beauveau and Marie Rose Poumaroux: Commerce, Vulnerability, and U.S.
Connections to the French Atlantic, 1780-1860. Glenn’s research
reorients what is known about inter-continental developments in the
so-called Age of Revolutions, across British, Spanish and French
empires, through compelling stories about intricate family networks
during the commercial and revolutionary turmoil from 1770 to 1810. In
particular, she sheds light on the previously unknown ways that French
and North American women traded goods and information and how
international networks of entrepreneurial women helped each other build
small businesses at the turn of the 19th century. Glenn was advised at
UD by Cathy Matson, Richards Professor Emerita of American History, who
called her work “of great consequence for the field of Atlantic World
studies.”
Matthew Rinkevich also earned the 2021 Wilbur Owen Sypherd
Prize in Humanities for his dissertation, titled Signs That Save:
Sacramental Matter and Agency in English Literature 1590–1660.
Rinkevich’s research explores the imaginative interplay between
literature and material cultures of religion in Reformation-era England.
In particular, his work reevaluates what is known about the
relationship between human beings and their material environments, and
focuses on the ways in which sacred objects like communion bread, holy
water and relics acted on and affected people spiritually. According to
Kristen Poole, Ned B. Allen Professor of English and Rinkevich’s
adviser, his dissertation includes a tremendous amount of original
archival work that “helps to reveal that thinking about materiality has
striking consonances and revealing distinctions across human history.”
George Herbert Ryden Prize in the Social Sciences
Alexandra Turano won the 2020 George Herbert Ryden Prize in
the Social Sciences for her dissertation, Examining the Impact of
Neuroimmune Dysregulation on Social Behavior of Male and Female Juvenile
Rats. Turano’s thesis examined the effects of mild activation of the
immune system on the development of age-appropriate social behaviors and
whether there are differences between males and females in these
outcomes. Advised by Jaclyn Schwarz, associate professor of
psychological and brain sciences, Turano found that immune system
activation around the time of birth can disrupt the development of
appropriate play behavior later in life. The work is relevant to human
health as many neurodevelopmental disorders, like autism, are associated
with early-life immune activation or infection.