The UNM Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) and the Global Education Office (GEO) have named three Lobos as the 2024 Globally Engaged Research awardee: Professor Subhankar Banerjee, biology major Ian Hutchinson, and anthropology major Ruizhe Liu.
The University of New Mexico is home to more than 1,300 international students from 96 countries who ultimately enrich the UNM research enterprise with diverse perspectives, remarkable innovation, and quality collaboration. Therefore, these Lobos deserve to be recognized each year as leaders on our campus and around our communities.
Bridging both national and institutional borders, internationally focused research enhances knowledge production by simultaneously broadening the investigative lens and generating a more nuanced analysis through the incorporation of global diversity. This award showcases existing activities and serves to elevate the visibility and caliber of future research by promoting the incorporation of cross-cultural perspectives and international relevance into the UNM research enterprise.The award emphasizes our commitment to robust, intentional, international partnerships in our research and classrooms to solve a wide range of global issues and prepare a new generation of scholars to work and live in an interconnected and rapidly evolving world.
2024 Awardees
Professor Subhankar Banerjee | The 2024 faculty awardee is Professor Banerjee from the Department of Art. Banerjee is the founding director of the UNM Center for Environmental Arts and Humanities and is a leader in the use of visual culture, particularly photography, to raise awareness of the global biodiversity crisis and the impacts of climate change. Banerjee has conducted extensive international fieldwork in partnership with local communities, scientists, and conservations, most notably to address the conservation status of shorebirds in the Canadian Arctic and New Zealand and tigers in the Indian Sundarban.
Ruizhe Liu | The 2024 graduate student awardee is Ruizhe Liu from the Department of Anthropology. Liu conducted 10 months of intensive fieldwork in a remote part of China to document the effects of rapid globalization on families and community structure. She has developed strong collaborative relationships with local community members and scholars and is working to create new academic spaces for anthropology in China.
Ian Hutchinson | The 2024 Deborah Rifenbary Memorial Undergraduate student awardee is Ian Hutchinson, a biology major who conducted fieldwork on fossil preservation in the Paraguayan Chaco in collaboration with UNM Associate Professor Jason Moore. After forming relationships with Paraguayan scholars during two seasons of field research, he partnered with them for a reciprocal visit to research sites in the US Southwest.
