Congratulations to Leon Fink!
Leon Fink, UIC Distinguished Professor of History, has just been named Researcher of the Year in the Humanities at UIC. The Researcher of the Year Awards recognize the efforts and commitment of researchers who have demonstrated outstanding research achievements to advance the knowledge in their field of expertise. There is one award given in the field of Humanities each year.
Professor Fink is a specialist in American labor, immigration history, and the Gilded Age/Progressive Era. He founded the PhD concentration in the History of Work, Race, and Gender in the Urban World (WRGUW), and edits the pivotal journal "Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas." The author or editor of eight books, Fink's most recent work seeks out the roots of today's "globalized" economic order in Sweatshops at Sea: Merchant Seamen in the World’s First Globalized Industry, from 1812 to 2000 (University of North Carolina Press, 2011), a study of maritime labor regulation, 1800-2000. He also recently released an edited volume entitled Workers Across the Americas: The Transnational Turn in Labor History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
As the award said, "Dr. Fink is widely recognized as expanding the geographical boundaries of labor history to take into account the reality of the global and transnational scope of labor. His maritime work is considered ground breaking and opens up a new sub-field by covering two hundred years of international labor organizing."