Three Social Science members named as Western University Faculty Scholars

April 27, 2021

Juan Carlos Hatchondo, Professor in Economics; Lisa Hodgetts, Associate Professor in Anthropology and Anna Zajacova, Associate Professor in Sociology

Three members of the Faculty of Social Science have been named as Western University Faculty Scholars for 2021.

 

The Faculty Scholar award recognizes significant scholarly achievements in teaching and research.

Juan Carlos Hatchondo joined Western University in 2019. His research combines innovations in economic theory and computational methods to investigate the implications of credit risk when sovereign governments or consumers default on their debt obligations.

Hatchondo’s research has been cited by academics around the world, more than 220 times in 2019 alone, and by policy makers. Hatchondo has received invitations to serve as visiting scholar at several policy institutions. In 2020, he was awarded the Bank of Montreal Fellowship in the Department of Economics and an SSHRC Insight Grants worth more than $70,000. As a testament of his stellar contributions to teaching and student advising, graduate students in Economics voted him Professor of the Year in April 2020.

Hatchondo has been Associate Editor for the Berkeley Electronic Press Journal of Macroeconomics since August 2020 and has served in committees of various international conferences. 


Lisa Hodgetts seeks to challenge assumptions about how archaeological projects are conceived of and executed, by whom, and for whom knowledge is generated. The result is a collaborative community-based approach, which necessitates a divergence from traditional extractive research that actively dismantles heritage and generates knowledge for academic publication rather than descendant communities. Through her work in the Canadian Arctic, Hodgetts has re-oriented her research towards community-based archaeology.

Her research has attracted more than $1.2M in funding as a principal investigator, and she has been a co-applicant or collaborator on research projects with more than $12M in funding. At present she is the Principal Investigator of a project entitled: Co-creating Inuvialuit Digital Archaeology and Heritage, funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant.

Hodgetts received the Pleva Award, in 2018, in recognition of her teaching excellence, and the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, in 2017. Along with her role at Western, Hodgetts is President of the Canadian Archaeological Association.

Anna Zajacova joined Western University in 2017. Her research includes the relationship between education and health, documenting the inequities within higher education in the United States and Canada, as reflected in numerous health outcomes among adults with different higher-education experiences and credentials.

Collaborating with researchers in other fields, Zajacova has provided insight into the demography and sociology of chronic pain, including two studies that reveal a ‘pain crisis’ among Americans. Since 2015, her work has been cited more than 3,200 times. Zajacova is currently a co-applicant or co-investigator on three major awards totaling more than $9 million.

Zajacova is Graduate Chair in the Sociology, served the faculty through roles on the Steering Committee member for the Centre for the Study of Political Behaviour and Executive Committee member of the Centre for Computational and Quantitative Social Science.

Established in 2005, the Faculty Scholars Award recognizes significant recent scholarly achievements in teaching or research. Nominated by faculty deans and selected by the Faculty Selection committee chaired by the Provost, the recipients have an international presence in their discipline and are considered all-round scholars. Winners hold the title “Faculty Scholar” for two years and receive $7,000 each year for scholarly activities, as well as receiving a citation.