Meredith Blaise wins the 2023-2024 Richard B. Lee Prize

October 18, 2024 by Jonathan Wang

The Department congratulates the recipients of the 2024-2024 Richard B. Lee Prize. Committee members were impressed by the quality of the eight papers nominated for this year’s award for the most outstanding student paper in critical anthropology. The Department would like to thank the colleagues who invested time and effort to nominate students’ work and enable this opportunity for wider recognition: Anisha Chadha, Hannah Quinn, Janita Van Dyk, Saul Cohen, Shiho Satsuka, and Shirley Yeung.

Congratulations to Meredith Blaise (pictured) for winning this year's Richard B. Lee Prize for her paper. “A Brain is a Brain is a Brain:” A Cascade of Racialized Health Imbalances in Neuroscience”, submitted to Professor Anisha Chadha’s course ANT 488: Political Economy of Biomedical Technologies. This ambitious paper is very much in the spirit of the critical anthropology the award is intended to honour. Meredith develops a strong and well justified critique of white supremacy in biomedical research focused on inequitable access to MRI technology, drawing on original research which affords interesting insights into the economics of MRI and how the pragmatics of recruiting a control group can introduce bias. The committee was deeply impressed by the importance of the topic, analytical and rhetorical heft of the paper, and effective use of biopolitical theory, and noted that Meredith’s exemplary work shows great promise for future graduate research in medical anthropology.

Congratulations to Richard Wu for winning an Honourable Mention for his paper “Duterte’s Populist Enregisterment and Coloniality as Enabling Condition”, submitted to Professor Shirley Yeung’s course ANT425: Language in Anthropological Thought. Richard employs the linguistic concept enregisterment to explain Rodrigo Duterte’s success as a populist political leader in the Philippines with reference to the context of enduring coloniality, specifically American imperialism. Committee members observed the paper’s effective explication of complex linguistic and semiotic theory, sophisticated yet clearly articulated argument, and careful situating in relation to relevant literature.