Latina/Latino studies professor Aja Y. Martinez and gender and women's studies professor and Latina/Latino studies affiliate Damian Vergara Bracamontes are two of eleven faculty members across campus to receive the Cohen Innovation Award from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation.
The Jozef and Huguette Cohen Innovation Awards are a program supporting visionary research in the arts, humanities, and humanistic social sciences. The awards provide seed funding for innovative projects that advance new directions in scholarship, creative activity, and public engagement while enhancing the visibility and impact of Illinois research.
Established through a generous philanthropic gift from Jozef and Huguette Cohen and funded in partnership with the colleges, the Office of the Provost, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation, the program is intended to help faculty pursue ambitious ideas that may be difficult to support through traditional funding mechanisms. The awards support activities such as building new research collaborations, developing emerging areas of inquiry, acquiring specialized skills, engaging with archives and field sites, and creating new pathways for recognition and influence in their fields.
Martinez's project will be to collaborate with Critical Race Theory founders Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic to preserve, organize, and curate their scholarly archive. By documenting the development of CRT through its principal architects, the project aims to improve public understanding of the field while safeguarding an important record of contemporary intellectual history.
Vergara Bracamontes' book project will trace how undocumented legal status became a defining social and political condition in post-1960s San Diego, introducing the concept of 'administrative checkpoints' to explain how immigration enforcement permeates everyday life. Drawing on archival research, policy analysis, and oral histories, it foregrounds the experiences of migrant women and transwomen while offering a new framework for understanding administrative violence.
Recipients were selected through a competitive review process that evaluated proposals for their innovation, potential to elevate the profile of Illinois research, demonstrated qualifications, and clarity of implementation. The awards reflect the university's commitment to fostering creative and transformative scholarship that enhances lives in Illinois, across the nation, and around the world.
Congratulations to this year's awardees for their leadership, imagination, and commitment to expanding the boundaries of research and creative expression. Their projects exemplify the spirit of innovation that the Cohen Awards were created to encourage and will help shape new opportunities for discovery, engagement, and impact across the arts and humanities.