The 2025 Iris Marion Young Awards for political engagement, given by the Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences’ Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Program and the School of Public and International Affairs, were announced Dec. 2, including the newly renamed Laura Lovett Award.

Sabina Deitrick, an associate professor in SPIA and a co-director in the University Center for Social and Urban Studies, was the inaugural recipient of the Lovett Award, which honors faculty for lifetime achievement.

"Our colleague Laura Lovett passed away unexpectedly on March 4, 2025,” said Frayda Cohen, who followed Lovett (2022-25) as Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies director.  "Laura was a broad-ranging historian of the 20th-century United States whose research and teaching focused on questions of gender, family, childhood, race, immigration, feminism and the environment. 

"Laura was also a passionate teacher, and her teaching stood out for building outreach partnerships with community organizations such as Breakthrough Pittsburgh and Jumpstart Pittsburgh, thus connecting Pitt undergraduates to middle and high school students across the city. At the national level, Laura stood out for her leadership positions at the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians whose triennial conference is the largest women’s history event in the world.”

Other award winners, for “working to promote justice and social activism in their communities,” include:

Faculty: Tiana U Wilson, assistant professor in Africana Studies

Staff: Stefanie Mowrey, a Pitt Digital staff member

Graduate student: Jennifer Karen Ponce Cori, a PhD candidate and Equity and Justice Fellow in the School of Education

Undergraduate student: Sarayu Cheemalapati, a bachelor of philosophy candidate in political science and the Frederick Honors College