Awards Recognize Excellence in Public Engagement
By Thomas Bruch - Originally Published June 18, 2025
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Individuals and teams from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who have made a visible impact on society were recently recognized with the 2025 Campus Awards for Excellence in Public Engagement. Faculty, staff members, students and community members who engage the public to address critical civic and community issues at the local, state, national and global levels were honored at an awards ceremony last month.
The recipients this year include faculty and staff members Antoinette Burton and Lee Ragsdale; graduate student Ananya Yammanuru; undergraduate student Ariana Mizan; the Entomology Graduate Student Association team; and the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology Communications and Outreach team.
Burton, a professor of history and director of the Humanities Research Institute at Illinois, is the recipient of the Distinguished Award for Excellence in Public Engagement.
Burton’s scholarship specializes in 19th and 20th century Britain and its empire — with a special focus on colonial India — along with research and writing on feminism and gender history. But her almost decade-long leadership at HRI has positioned the institute as a bastion of public engagement, stretching the imagination of what a humanities researcher can be. Burton’s approach to embedding the humanities in the public does not move in one direction, from campus outward, but instead is grounded in an ethical reciprocity.
Her role as the principal investigator of a Mellon Foundation-funded project, a 16-partner consortium headquartered at HRI called Humanities Without Walls, has recalculated that boundary line between campus and the wider world. The Humanities in Action program places undergraduate students in paid internships with local community organizations where the priority of the semester-long work is serving the needs and ambitions of the partner program in both words and in practice.
She also oversees the operations of the Odyssey Project, an adult education program housed within HRI for students who live at or below the poverty line and are seeking reentry into higher education through U. of I. humanities courses. Burton has fought to keep this community-driven program fully funded year after year, and the results have been profound. According to surveys, 50% of students report that the Odyssey Project helped them improve their financial stability; 70% experienced a stronger sense of community, increased civic engagement and said their family’s perception of learning was positively impacted by their involvement in the program; and 100% of students reported improved feelings of empowerment and hope.