Tallman Earns Pair of National Awards
Paula Skye Tallman, PhD, Assistant Professor of Anthropology in Loyola University Chicago’s College of Arts and Sciences, has received two national honors from the American Anthropological Association (AAA), recognizing her contributions to undergraduate teaching and community-engaged research.
Tallman, who also serves as the Carolyn Farrell, BVM, Endowed Professor in Women and Leadership at Loyola's Gannon Center for Women and Leadership, received the 2026 AAA Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching of Anthropology, which honors educators who have made outstanding contributions to undergraduate anthropological instruction. She was also selected for the 2026 Setha M. Low Engaged Anthropology Award, recognizing anthropologists who apply their work to pressing issues facing people and the planet through a commitment to social justice and community engagement.
“Dr. Tallman’s two national recognitions speak to the range and impact of her work as a teacher, mentor, researcher, and community partner,” said Peter J. Schraeder, PhD, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “Her scholarship brings students into meaningful research experiences while working alongside communities to address real-world challenges. These honors are a wonderful recognition of the way she connects research, teaching, and service.”
Tallman’s research brings together anthropology and global health to examine how environmental factors affect human health, with a particular focus on women and children in South America and Southeast Asia. Importantly, her work goes beyond documenting inequities toward using research to support community-based action for water security and gender equity in Peru and Indonesia.
“These honors are especially meaningful because they reflect what I value most about being at a Jesuit university, and that is a deep commitment to both undergraduate education and research in service of others,” said Tallman. “I’m grateful to be at Loyola, where our mission and institution encourage me to bring those commitments together in impactful ways for our students and community partners.”
Tallman’s community-engaged research has grown from a longstanding partnership with Peruvian collaborator Lucia Lopez Florez. Together, they co-design research, educational programs, and interventions with educators, nonprofits, and government leaders. Their work has included gender equity curricula, water access policy efforts, and adolescent leadership programs developed with the Peruvian Ministry of Education.
Their next initiative, Water for Wellbeing, will use a substantial philanthropic gift to improve water access for more than 2,000 students across 10 rural schools in northern Peru. The work will also be featured in the forthcoming documentary Water in Our Hands, scheduled for release in Fall 2027.
Tallman brings her research into the classroom through the Anthropology Health Action (AHA!) Lab, where undergraduate students participate in international fieldwork, data analysis, and grant writing under a model of peer leadership and faculty mentorship. Her students have secured nearly $100,000 in grants and fellowships and have co-authored 16 scholarly publications, including four with undergraduate first authors. Tallman recently launched Gannon Global, a new initiative in the Gannon Center that brings together research, community-engaged research, and leadership formation.
Learn more about Tallman and her research in her latest presentation: “From Research to Real Change: Women Leading for Good”
About the College of Arts and Sciences
Founded in 1870, the College of Arts and Sciences is the oldest and largest of Loyola University Chicago’s 13 schools and colleges, serving as the academic home for nearly 8,000 students (roughly 50 percent of Loyola’s total student population). It is academically diverse with twenty academic departments that span an array of intellectual pursuits, ranging from the natural sciences and computational sciences to the humanities, the social sciences, and the fine and performing arts. It is also highly interdisciplinary with thirty-one interdisciplinary programs and seven interdisciplinary centers, including the mission-centric Jesuit Heritage Research Center and the Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage. The College is home to over 450 full-time, award-winning faculty, who are committed to teaching and research excellence. They teach nearly 2,000 classes each semester, including 88 percent of all Core Curriculum classes taken by undergraduate students across the university. They also contribute to eleven doctoral programs whose graduates have helped propel Loyola starting in 2025 to R-1 research status (the highest research status a university can achieve). Our students and faculty are engaged internationally at Loyola Rome in Italy, as well as at dozens of university-sponsored study abroad and research sites around the world. Home to the departments that anchor the university’s Core Curriculum, the College seeks to prepare all of Loyola’s students to think critically, to engage the world of the 21st century at ever-deepening levels, and to become caring and compassionate individuals. Our faculty, staff, and students view service to others not just as one option among many, but as a constitutive dimension of their very being. In the truest sense of the Jesuit ideal, our graduates strive to be “individuals for others.”