Students in disciplines ranging from history to nursing to public health earned recognition for their scholarship and their use of library resources in the 2025 University Libraries Undergraduate Research Awards.

Held in the spring of each academic year, the Undergraduate Research Awards reward excellence in undergraduate use of library resources and services and demonstrate the contribution of the Libraries to student learning. They highlight the value of information literacy by requiring students to describe their research process as part of the application procedure and encourage faculty to create assignments that engage students in the use of library resources.

Award winners are selected in each of two tracks: the Garnet Track for juniors and seniors, and the Black Track for freshmen and sophomores. 

This year’s winners include:

Garnet Track

• 1st place: Isabel Sans, White Sun Rise: a Proof of Concept Novel of Female Combatants of the Spanish Civil War
• 2nd place: Henley Armon, Giovanni Giacinto Achilli v. John Henry Newman: British Attitudes Towards Anti-Catholicism and Sexual Violence in the Nineteenth Century
• 3rd place: Emily Rabon, The Right to Keep and Bear Arms: Analyzing the Original Intent of the Second Amendment 

Black Track

• 1st place: Lacie Straley, (Her)story: Jacqueline Kennedy’s Life and Legacy
• 2nd place: Khufu Holly, Boxed Within the Binary: The Impact of the Binary Gender Bias on Transgender Healthcare
• 3rd place (tie): Sofia Acosta, Breaking the Glass of Harley Quinn
• 3rd place (tie): Vivienne Trifiletti, Saving Our Mothers 

With topics ranging from women who fought in the Spanish Civil War to a comparative study of maternal mortality rates in the U.S. and other nations to the evolution of a popular comics villain, the awards showcased the breadth of student scholarship at the university. 

“We are continually impressed by the quality of work we see when reviewing award submissions,” said Director of the Irvin Department of Rare Books Dr. Michael Weisenburg, who chaired this year’s Undergraduate Research Awards review committee. “The winning projects reflect the many ways our students make the university a better, stronger institution through the outstanding work they do.”

Many of this year’s honorees plan to carry their research forward into their careers or graduate studies. Armon, for example, will continue her exploration of the role a group of little-known women played in a famous Victorian libel trial against Cardinal Newman as a graduate student in history at North Carolina State, while Rabon intends to bring the insights she gained in her honors thesis on the original intent of the Second Amendment to her studies at Harvard Law School. Trifiletti’s research on maternal mortality rates has shaped her career plans in nursing. And Holly’s study of binary gender bias on transgender and gender-diverse healthcare has been accepted for publication in the Penn Bioethics Journal.

The winning entries for this year’s Undergraduate Research Awards were selected by a review committee from a large and competitive pool of submissions. Each winner receives a cash prize. Since the start of the awards 18 years ago, 81 students have been recognized with more than $23,000 in monetary prizes.

The winners contribute their projects to Scholar Commons, the institutional repository to preserve, collect and disseminate the research and scholarship of the University of South Carolina.