Shawnika Hull Awarded a 2023 Board of Trustees Research Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence

May 2, 2023

Given by Rutgers University, the award “recognizes the exceptional research accomplishments of newly-promoted and tenured (as of July 1, 2023) faculty members.”

SC&I Assistant Professor of Communication Shawnika Hull, at the School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, has been named a recipient of a 2023 University-wide Faculty Year-End Excellence Award.

This year, 29 Rutgers University faculty members received recognition in ten award categories. Hull has been awarded the Board of Trustees Research Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence. According to the university, this award “recognizes the exceptional research accomplishments of newly-promoted and tenured (as of July 1, 2023) faculty members.”

The award recipients were announced on Friday, April 27, 2023 in an email Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway shared with the Rutgers University community.

Hull’s research focuses on reducing racial inequities in HIV incidence through community-engaged, applied communication science.

“Each year these awards honor members of the Rutgers community selected by their colleagues for outstanding contributions to teaching, research, and public service . . . I hope you share our pride in and congratulations for this year’s honorees,” President Holloway wrote.

Hull’s research focuses on reducing racial inequities in HIV incidence through community-engaged, applied communication science. She develops, implements, and evaluates theoretically grounded communication interventions focused on impacting individual and social-structural barriers to HIV prevention. This research is informed by and developed in close collaboration with community partners. Her expertise includes qualitative (i.e. focus groups) and quantitative (i.e. surveys, experiments) data collection and analytical methods.

Her research has been funded through various institutional, non-profit (i.e., MAC AIDS Fund) and governmental mechanisms (i.e., NIH, CDC) and published in communication and public health journals. Her rigorous, theoretically grounded, collaborative approach to research informs health communication theorizing and practice.

Hull is currently a Visiting Professor in the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California, San Francisco. Hull earned her Ph.D. in Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

Learn more about the Communication Department at the School of Communication and Information on the website.