Dr. Ingrid Petersen, Professor of Social Recovery Mechanisms, has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Awkwardness Studies (IAAS), the field's highest honor.
The award recognizes Dr. Petersen's three decades of research into how humans recover from minor social failures, including mistaken waves, forgotten names, and premature goodbyes.
"When I began this work, colleagues questioned whether 'awkwardness' could be a legitimate field of study," Dr. Petersen said in her acceptance remarks. "Now we have peer-reviewed journals, annual conferences, and doctoral programs. The human experience of social discomfort deserves rigorous investigation."
Dr. Petersen's most-cited paper, "The Phenomenology of Waving at Strangers: Recovery Strategies and Social Cost," has been referenced in over 400 subsequent publications and formed the basis for her influential taxonomy of social escape strategies.
The IAAS citation specifically praised her methodological innovations, including the development of controlled laboratory scenarios for inducing authentic awkwardness—a technical challenge that had stymied earlier researchers.
"You cannot simply tell someone to 'act awkward,'" Dr. Petersen noted. "The feeling must be genuine. My early work involved elaborate deceptions that would now require extensive IRB approval."
Dr. Petersen will deliver the IAAS keynote address at next year's symposium in Vienna.