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Rackham Honors the Winners of the ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Awards of 2008

Posted Thursday, April 30th, 2009

While all graduating Rackham students produce excellent dissertations, some students write dissertations that are truly exceptional for the high quality of their scholarship and for the significance and interest of their findings. We recognize these exceptional dissertations with the ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award.

Dissertations are nominated for the award by University faculty who have served as chairs of dissertation committees of outstanding students. The nominations are then read by a review panel composed of members of the Michigan Society of Fellows, with assistance from other members of the University faculty and research community.

The awards are co-sponsored by ProQuest, which publishes 35,000 dissertations annually, including more than 700 by University of Michigan authors. We are delighted to have them join us in celebrating the remarkable intellectual achievements of these promising young scholars.

Distinguished Dissertation Awards of 2008 Winners

The Rackham Graduate School takes great pleasure in honoring these outstanding members of the community of scholars:

Elizabeth Ben-Ishai
Political Science
The Autonomy-Fostering State: Citizenship and Social Service Delivery
Todd Bryan
School of Natural Resources and Environment
Aligning Identity: Social Identity and Changing Context in Community-Based Environmental Conflict
Kimberly Clum
Social Work and Anthropology
The Shadows of Immobility: Low-Wage Work, Single Mothers' Lives, and Workplace Culture
Lori Khatchadourian
Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology
Social Logics Under Empire: The Armenian 'Highland Satrapy' and Achaemenid Rule, CA. 600-300 BC
Mark Kiel
Cell & Developmental Biology
Identification, Localization and Characterization of Hematopoietic Stem Cells and Their Niche
Michelle Miller
Romance Languages and Literatures
Material Friendship: Service and Amity in Early Modern French Literature
Matthew Schulmerich
Chemistry
Subsurface and Transcutaneous Raman Spectroscopy, Imaging, and Tomography
Susan Sierra
Mathematics
The Geometry of Birationally Commutative Graded Domains