The American Sociological Association has presented its 2026 Public Understanding of Sociology Award to two women in academia. The annual award honors individuals who have made exemplary contributions to advance the public understanding of sociology, sociological research, and scholarship among the general public through community work, public engagement, contributing to policy and practices, and/or translating sociological knowledge into broader publics.
Anna Romina Guevarra, professor of global Asian studies at the University of Illinois Chicago, was honored for her scholarship on immigrant and transnational labor, the geopolitics of care work, and critical community studies. Dr. Guevarra is co-founder of the Dis/Placements public history project in Chicago, which focuses on the history of people’s displacements in a northside neighborhood of Chicago, and their ongoing struggles over land, housing, health care, and education, related to urban renewal policies, racial segregation, gentrification, and state and imperial violence. This work has led to several policy changes regarding education and worker’s rights in Chicago, in Illinois, and beyond.
At the University of Illinois Chicago, Dr. Guevarra is co-principal investigator of the Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution initiative and of the Social Justice and Human Rights Cluster. She is the author of several publications, including Marketing Dreams and Manufacturing Heroes: The Transnational Labor Brokering of Filipino Workers (Rutgers University Press, 2009).
Dr. Guevarra is a graduate of the University of California, Irvine, where she earned a dual degree in biological sciences and women’s studies. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, San Francisco.
Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, was honored for her work with the media, government, public education, and community organizations in translating health equity research into meaningful social action. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Wrigley-Field developed measures of equity in COVID health metrics, advanced access to vaccines, and uncovered racial inequities in mortality. She also founded the Seward Vaccine Equity Project to distribute vaccines to African immigrants and their families. Additionally, she has been influential in distributing information to Minneapolis residents about air pollution and ways to mitigate its risks.
A University of Minnesota faculty member since 2016, Dr. Wrigley-Field currently serves as associate director of the Minnesota Population Center. She holds affiliations with the university’s Bioethics Center. the Center for Healthy Aging and Innovation, the Center for Public Health Systems, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the Life Course Center.
Dr. Wrigley-Field received her bachelor’s degree in sociology with minors in mathematics, history, and philosophy and her master’s degree in philosophy from New York University. She also holds a master’s degree in sociology and a Ph.D. in sociology with a minor in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.