McMaster University

Student Awardee

Stephanie Rico is a Chicana scholar and educator at McMaster University, interested in photographing and archiving moments of conviviendo, the Spanish word meaning to live together. Her current work in the public humanities involves working with the Pedagogies of Hope Collective and the Hamilton LGBTQ2S+ Community Archive. She is also the co-creator and co-editor of JUNQ, an independent literary magazine based in Hamilton, Ontario. Her doctoral research explores the ways conviviendo opens us towards an alternate ordering and storying of life on the Borderlands, one where our desires propel us towards hopes and futures of love and coexistence rather than violence and estrangement.

University of Vienna

Faculty Awardee

Elisabeth Lechner is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Vienna, currently working on a habilitation project on Anglophone culinary life writing, i.e. the role of food in women’s auto/biographical works. She completed her PhD at the University of Vienna in 2020. Situated at the intersections of literary, cultural and media studies as well as affect & body studies, her research on ‘disgusting’ female bodies, body positivity and digital feminist activisms was published academically and as the German non-fiction book, Riot Don't Diet! Aufstand der widerspenstigen Körper.