Global honour for the Faculty of Arts and Science
Five students in the Faculty of Arts and Science have earned Global Undergraduate Awards, including one Global winner, signifying the best paper in the category from around the world. The year the Global Undergraduate award judges adjudicated 2,097 submissions from 327 institutions.
The Global Undergraduate Awards are the world’s leading undergraduate awards program which recognizes top undergraduate work, shares this work with a global audience, and connects students across cultures and disciplines.
The FAS Global winner this year is Leo (Han) Yang for his paper titled The Limits of Recognition: Artistic Superfluity and the Paris Salon in the 1860s. He won the Global honour in the Art History and Theory category. Last year Yang earned a Global Undergraduate Highly Commended award.
Yang joins elite company at Queen’s University as only the fourth student to earn Global honours from the Global Undergraduate awards since they started in 2015. They are Kai Ingot Damai Siallagan, Bethany Schaufler-Biback, and Eden Gelgoot.
His award-winning paper focused on the 1863 Salon des Refusés, an exhibition established after the official Paris Salon rejected numerous works that departed from traditional artistic standards. Yang explained that the exhibition was a turning point in the art world by allowing the public to evaluate artwork rejected by established artistic institutions. He sought to show how broader political and economic developments, such as industrialization, shaped the movement’s emergence.
When asked if he was surprised by earning Global honours, Yang talked about the work he put into his submission. “For this competition you are limited to 5,000 words, so I had to condense my dissertation down and that was the biggest challenge. It was hard to determine what to include."
Yang says he was watching the results and when he didn’t hear his name in the Highly Commended, he didn’t think he had a chance.
“I didn’t think I was going to win so when I did it was shocking. My name may be on the award, but Queen’s is written all over the work that got me there. Professor (Allison) Morehead taught me that entering a new discipline doesn’t mean abandoning your old questions; it’s about learning to approach them differently. She showed me that the best mentorship doesn’t tell you what to see, it teaches you how to look.”
For his efforts, Yang will be participating in the Global Undergraduate Summit in Dublin, Ireland, the annual gathering of the Global Undergraduate Awards community, bringing together exceptional undergraduate researchers, recent graduates, academics, industry leaders and thought leaders from around the world.
The other winners included:
Regional winner (United States and Canada)
The highest performing Highly Commended Entrant in each Region is named a Regional Winner of their category. They are published and receive a certificate of recognition from Undergraduate Awards.
Vaishnavi Suganthan - BAH ’26 (Political Studies), Minor in Sociology. Politics and International Relations category. Title of submission: Colonial Legibility: Indigenous Misrecognition in Immigration and Asylum Systems. Also received a Highly Commended distinction for a second submission: When Protection Becomes Politics: Framing, Impunity, and Tamil Mobilization in Sri Lanka.
Highly commended
Zoey Rhone - BAH ’26 (Health Studies), Certificate in Law. History category. Title of submission: The Role of Nazi Propaganda in Youth Indoctrination: Lessons from Jojo Rabbit.
Aaron Smiley - MA ’27 (History, in progress); BAH ’26 (History). History category. Title of submission: You Have to Get What You Can in Wartime: A study of public criticism against British wartime nutritional policy, 1939-1955.
Caitlin Mastroieni - BAH ’27 (Political Studies), Minor in Global Development Studies. Politics and International Relations category. Title of submission: The Commodification of Care: Medical Voluntourism and the Neoliberal Political Economy of Social Reproduction.
The Global Undergraduate Awards also noted there were eight Queen’s students in their new Rising Circle category (top 20 per cent of all applicants). These students, while narrowly missing an award, are considered, by the category judges as ones to watch for the upcoming year, showcasing their potential for further achievements in their final year of study.
“Leo and Vaishavi are powerful examples of the impact of an Arts and Science education,” says Troy Day, Associate Dean (Research). “By conducting research alongside leading scholars, they’ve learned to cross disciplines, challenge assumptions, and approach complex issues from multiple angles. This unique freedom to pursue their own questions shapes not only what our students know, but how they think. Congratulations to these outstanding student researchers — we’re excited to see what big questions they tackle next.”