Professor Macaulay awarded prestigious WARF Named Professorship

We are incredibly proud that Language Sciences Professor Monica Macaulay was one of five UW-Madison faculty to receive a prestigious WARF Named Professorship in 2023-2024. The award recognizes faculty for their extraordinary contributions to scholarship through research, teaching, and service activities.

Macaulay chose to name her professorship after Menominee elder Ada Deer, a long-time passionate and effective activist for Native American rights in many spheres of life. Among many other accomplishments, Ada Deer was the first Menominee person to receive an undergraduate degree from UW-Madison, and the first woman to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Ada Deer’s service to the community has been recognized in many ways, including a UW-Madison Distinguished Alumni award in 2022.

Professor Macaulay has devoted her professional life to the documentation and revitalization of various indigenous languages of the Americas, including a focus on Menominee since 1998. She is currently co-editor of the Papers of the Algonquian Conference, a member of Enwejig Indigenous Language Advocates, and project lead on the NSF-funded Nisinoon Algonquian morpheme database. Read our recent news feature to learn more about her linguistic and community work as co-director of the Wisconsin Indigenous Languages Lab. Congratulations Ada Deer Professor of Language Sciences Monica Macaulay!