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The objective—to effectively explain your thesis in a language appropriate to a nonspecialist audience, and in just 180 seconds! A daunting task but, as part of this year’s 2021 AAA Annual Meeting, 10 of our members did just that, with clear and concise presentations on a number of complex issues ranging from tactical citizenship to spiritualism to women’s dancing.
The grand prize ($400) went to Stephanie Jacobs for “Nature Is My Higher Power: Ontological ‘Prospecting’ in Addiction-Recovery.” First runner-up ($200) went to Dustin Reuther for “Dulac-You-Wanna: Cultural Heritage and Subsiding Ecologies in Louisiana’s Coastal Marsh.” The second runner-up ($100) went to Justin Haruyama for “Mining for Coal and Souls: Modes of Relationality in Emerging Chinese-Zambian Worlds.”
Judges for the Three Minute Thesis competition, sponsored by the National Institute of Social Sciences, hailed from top media outlets including NPR and Science.