Brown, Presser Honored at Annual College Faculty Convocation
Professors Michelle Brown and Lois Presser received awards for excellence in research and outstanding teaching during the 2023 College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Convocation.
Michelle Brown, Professor
Excellence in Research & Creative Achievement Awards: Senior
Brown is an acclaimed visual criminologist who joined the University of Tennessee in 2011, received early tenure, and was promoted to professor in 2018. She is an excellent researcher who has published two books on criminology and culture and has another book under contract, all with NYU Press, along with 50 other peer-reviewed pieces.
Brown edited the Palgrave MacMillan Crime, Media, and Culture book series and was editor of the Sage journal Crime, Media, Culture. Very notably, she served as the senior editor of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Crime, Media, and Popular Culture, which received Library Journal’s Best Reference Work Award in 2018.
In addition to a Chancellor’s Award for Teaching and the College’s Diversity Leadership Award, she has also received the University’s Jefferson Prize along with the College’s Award for New Research in the Arts and Humanities. The American Society of Criminology named Michelle Brown the Critical Criminologist of the Year in 2016.
Lois Presser, Professor
James R. and Nell W. Cunningham Outstanding Teaching Award
Presser’s nomination came at the urging of our graduate students, who refer to Presser as “one of the most inspiring and dedicated professors” with whom they have worked. They especially note her efforts to hone their research skills, commenting that “she does this by offering extremely detailed feedback on every assignment, creating a space where we feel safe to facilitate discussion, ask questions, and seek additional help whenever and for whatever reason.”
Across her career, Presser has received 21 fellowships and grants, including a Fulbright. She published four monographs, edited five books, and published 61 other papers. Among those papers are several co-written with graduate students who have gone on to remarkable careers of their own. Presser has supervised 17 thesis and dissertation projects and eight senior honors projects. She has taught classes on narrative criminology (an area of criminology that she founded) in Finland, Italy, and Norway. Presser received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2014 and the Excellence in Research (mid-career) award from the College of Arts and Sciences in 2015. Last spring, she was named Outstanding Graduate Director of the Year by the Graduate Student Senate.