Student Award Recipients
Each year, the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department honors one or two graduating undergraduate students with the Outstanding Undergraduate Award. This award recognizes an outstanding undergraduate student who has demonstrated exceptional achievement in academic performance, course work, capstone paper, WGSS-related advocacy, and meaningful contributions to the WGSS community.
2025 Award Recipients
Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award
Kira Subedi (She)
Kira Subedi is a passionate advocate whose work embodies the very heart of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. From organizing student walkouts against gun violence in high school to mentoring first-generation students through the Darwin T. Turner Scholarship, Kira has consistently turned theory into action.
Her dedication to marginalized communities shines through her work with Ethiopian Tewahedo Social Services, where she supported Nepali-Bhutanese youth navigating language barriers and racial trauma. This commitment extends to UC’s classrooms, where she helped design a Reproductive Justice course as a Teaching Assistant, ensuring future students engage critically with intersectional frameworks.
Kira’s scholarly work is equally transformative. Her capstone, grounded in Transnational Feminist Theory, exposes how borders—both physical and systemic—render women of color vulnerable to capitalism, colonialism, and gendered violence. By centering voices like Gloria Anzaldúa and Maria Lugones, she challenges us to rethink safety, power, and solidarity across cultures.
This fall, Kira brings this lens to Ohio State’s Clinical Mental Health Counseling program, where she’ll combat stigma as a future therapist.
Audrey Lacey (She)
Audrey Lacey is a fierce advocate whose work bridges reproductive justice, carceral abolition, and transnational feminism. Whether organizing with Planned Parenthood Generation Action—where she spearheaded free emergency contraceptive access and Campus Care Kits—or fighting for Ohio’s Reproductive Freedom Amendment as a Field Organizing Fellow, Audrey turns theory into tangible change.
Her scholarship confronts systemic violence head-on. In her WGSS capstone, Audrey exposes how neocolonialism weaponizes motherhood in U.S. prisons, where pregnant incarcerated individuals—disproportionately women of color—are shackled during birth, denied abortion access, and separated from their newborns. Drawing on postcolonial feminists like Shellee Colen, she reveals how prisons racialize reproduction: valuing incarcerated people’s labor as birth mothers while vilifying their capacity to parent.
This research mirrors her activism. After hearing an abortion patient describe driving five hours twice due to Ohio’s 24-hour waiting period, Audrey dedicated herself to dismantling barriers—through grassroots campaigns, her internship with the Ohio Justice & Policy Center, and soon, as a future reproductive rights lawyer.
Outstanding Graduate Student Award
Loïc Filipe-Hémery (He)
Loïc Filipe-Hémery is an extraordinary scholar-teacher whose innovative pedagogy and transnational scholarship are redefining inclusive education. This year's recipient of UC's Excellence in Teaching Award for Graduate Assistants (Master's category), Loïc exemplifies teaching as activism.
Whether guiding students through Revolutionary Women in WGSS or beginner French courses, Loïc's feminist pedagogy creates dynamic spaces where language and gender intersect. His award-winning teaching methods empower students to question how linguistic structures shape identity—work that informs his groundbreaking research on second-language acquisition and gender fluidity.
As co-chair of the Cincinnati Conference on Romance and Arabic Languages and Literatures, he centers decolonial frameworks, while his own journey—from French law classrooms to UC's WGSS program—embodies the transnational scholarship he teaches.
Outstanding Alumnx Award
Lonnie Jennings (He)
Lonnie Jennings is a visionary leader who has transformed WGSS theory into powerful community change. Since graduating in 2021, Lonnie has built bridges between racial justice, arts activism, and policy reform with remarkable impact.
As co-founder of the Radical ALLI Center, Lonnie created a vital hub for Cincinnati's Black young professionals - securing United Way's prestigious Black Empowerment Works grant and launching initiatives like the "Future Leaders" clothing line and Cincy Knows Best Arts festival. His work with the Center for Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation further cements his role in shaping the city's equity landscape.
Now as a Carl B. Westmoreland Memorial Fellow pursuing his MPA, Lonnie brings his WGSS lens to cyber policy and immigrant justice through United We Dream, organizing to empower marginalized youth.
From the classroom to the community, Lonnie exemplifies how feminist education fuels liberation. His leadership reminds us that another Cincinnati - one rooted in radical care and possibility - is already being built.
Hallie Saylor (they)
In addition to maintaining a GPA of 3.8, Hallie has been on the Dean's List 3 times in 2 years of attending UC, interned for the Ion Center for Violence Prevention, where they completed 40 hours of crisis prevention training, shadowed an online crisis hotline, tabled events, and learned about domestic violence resources for the greater Cincinnati population. They have been involved in activism since 2016 by participating in multiple activist activities, including Black Lives Matter protests, Pride events, tabling at employment opportunity events, and attending events for Pro-Palestine organizations. They are also engaged in queer and trans activism and have attended events at Transform Cincy.
Hallie explains that the WGS program at UC has given them a sense of purpose and direction in their life. They have learned the value of listening to lived experiences, systematic oppression, and activism. Their future plans include continuing their education as a graduate student in social work to provide affordable therapy for queer and trans communities. They are also interested in conducting research in trans medical history. They report that none of this would be possible without the support and care of their professors, and they cannot wait to continue their journey in community work.
Gabby Zink (she)
In addition to maintaining a GPA of 3.7, Gabby has spent her time at UC working with organizations to advance issues that are important to her. She has worked with the organization United for Reproductive and Gender Equity, also known as URGE, where she was active in gathering tens of thousands of signatures to add Issue 1 to the November 2023 Ohio ballot (which passed, codifying the Right to Make Reproductive Decisions Including Abortion into our Ohio Constitution), as well as held events offering services like school supplies, mentoring, job fairs, and food drives for marginalized communities in the Greater Cincinnati Area.
Over the four years she has been at UC, she has also participated in multiple women's rights marches, protesting the right to reproductive freedom. She has also worked to advance the DEI goals of the organization Empower, Learn, Create and tutored other educators who are actively pursuing higher education, offering peer reviews, EBSCOhost assistance, and provided guidance to classes that pertain to writing, critical thinking, and feminist theory.
Through her education in WGS, she has gained a better understanding of herself and what she is passionate about, which is working with and for people. She aims to use her education and training in the skills of theoretical writing, critical thinking, and community engagement to pursue a career that creates a better world and helps educate people on the importance of DEI and social justice.