[wapadc] 2015 Praxis Award Recipients

WAPA would like to congratulate the four recipients (co-winners and two honorable mentions) of the 2015 Praxis Award. The awards were announced and presented during the NAPA Business Meeting at November's AAA meetings in Denver. The co-winners each received a check for $1000, and all recipients received an award certificate.

 

The two awardees are:

 

Mari Clarke and her team for their project "Improving Awareness and Technical Skills in Road Maintenance within the Third Rural Transport Project, Vietnam." (Mari is also a long time WAPA member and past president.)

 

The Praxis Award also went to Stephen Weidlich and the AECOM team for their entry, "Little Saigon Design Guidelines" in San Diego, CA.

 

There were also two Honorable Mentions provided.  The first was given to a team from LTG Associates for "Pastors at Risk: Toward an Improved Culture of Health for United Methodist Clergy in North Carolina." (Several members of LTG Associates are also WAPA members.)

 

An Honorable Mention also went to Federico Cintrón-Moscoso, working with the Centro Para La Conservación Del Paisaje (Center for Landscape Conservation) in Puerto Rico, for the project "Public Participation in the Revision of El Yunque National Forest Management Plan."

 

More detailed information on all the awardees and their projects is found on the WAPA website at:  http://wapadc.org/2015-Praxis-Award-Winners

 

WAPA would like to express deep appreciation for the diligent work done by the 2015 Award jurors:

 

Michael Agar helped establish the MAA program at U Maryland (where he is emeritus professor), has authored several books, runs his own consulting firm, Ethknoworks LLC, and is a research professor at U New Mexico.

 

Dominique Desjeux, professor emeritus in the Anthropology Department at the Sorbonne in Paris, founded a French social anthropology professional network called AnthroPik, and runs an international consulting firm, Daize and Co.

 

Tracy Meerwarth Pester is a business anthropologist who has worked in recent years to modernize anthropological ethics statements to more closely align with the actual work done by practicing anthropologists.

 

The 2015 WAPA Praxis Committee consists of Shirley Buzzard, Jenny Masur, Stan Yoder, and Terry Redding (chair).

 

As WAPA members know,  the biennial Praxis Award recognizes outstanding achievement in translating anthropological knowledge into action as reflected in a single project. Awardees demonstrate the value of anthropological knowledge, theory and methods across differing scenarios and sectors, and who clearly demonstrate how anthropology can be applied to effectively address contemporary human problems.

The Praxis Award is well into its fourth decade, and this year marks the first time we have had an international juror (Desjeux). In addition, it marks the first awardee (Cintrón-Moscoso) in recent memory who is based wholly outside the 50 US states.

The next award cycle will be 2017.

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