Carleton Alumna May Chazan Wins 2012 CAGS/UMI Distinguished Dissertation Award

Carleton University alumna May Chazan is the winner of the 2012 Distinguished Dissertation Award from the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies (CAGS), in collaboration with University Microfilms International (UMI), a division of ProQuest.

The CAGS/UMI award, worth $1,500, recognizes doctoral students whose dissertations make an original contribution to their academic field. Two awards are offered each year: one in engineering, medical sciences and natural sciences; and one in fine arts, humanities and social sciences.

Chazan, who graduated from Carleton last fall with a PhD in Geography and a specialization in Political Economy, won for her dissertation that undertook a sensitive and in-depth analysis of the global Grandmothers to Grandmothers campaign. That campaign was started by the Stephen Lewis Foundation in response to large numbers of African children who had been orphaned by AIDS.

Under the supervision of Carleton University’s Dr. Michael Brklacich in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, her work illustrated how the campaign positively impacted the lives of hundreds of South African women through their collective response to HIV/AIDS in South Africa.

Chazan says she was humbled and inspired by the wisdom and experience the women brought to their work.

Last year, Chazan was presented with the Alice Wilson Award from the Royal Society of Canada (RSC). That award is given to a woman of outstanding academic qualifications who is entering a career in scholarship or research at the postdoctoral level.

She was also awarded the 2011 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Postdoctoral Prize, which is presented to the most outstanding postdoctoral applicant in Canada. Chazan’s research was sponsored by SSHRC and the Trudeau Foundation, as well as by Carleton and the Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division (HEARD) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa.

At Fall Convocation last year, she was awarded the University Medal for Outstanding Graduate Work (Doctoral Level).

Chazan is continuing her postdoctoral research with Mark Hunter at the Department of Geography and Program in Planning at the University of Toronto.

She will be presented with her CAGS/UMI award at the 50th Annual Conference on November 5th, 2012 at the Fairmont Château Hotel in Ottawa.

The Canadian Association for Graduate Studies (CAGS) was founded in 1962 to promote graduate education and university research. The association brings together 58 Canadian universities with graduate programs and the three federal research-granting agencies, as well as other institutions and organizations having an interest in graduate studies.

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