The New York-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a $300,000 (U.S.) grant to York's Centre for Refugee Studies. The grant will allow the centre to research and determine how the United Nations and non-governmental organizations could better protect refugees.

The U.S. branch of the Landscape Ecology Association, at its 1997 annual meeting, honoured Environmental Studies professor Michael Hough with its Distinguished Landscape Practitioner award. The award recognizes Hough's contributions to the application of the principles of landscape ecology to real-world problems, Plan Canada magazine reported.

The Ontario Historical Society selected Labouring Lives: Work and Workers in Nineteenth Century Ontario, edited by Social Science professor Paul Craven, as the "best book on Ontario's social, economic, political or cultural history published in the past three years."

Ethnomusicologist and jazz historian Howard Spring has become adjunct professor in the graduate Ethnomusicology & Musicology program of the Department of Music.

Scotiabank has endowed a new Professorship in International Business at York's Schulich School of Business. The new Professorship will enrich Schulich's international courses, research and outreach activities.

A three-year research project entitled "International Development Ethics and Population Displacement: The Nature and Extent of Canada's Obligations in Developing Countries" has received a SSHRC Strategic Grant in Applied Ethics valued at $236,980. The principal investigator is Environmental Studies professor Peter Penz, and the co-investigators are professor Wesley Cragg (Schulich School of Business and Philosophy/Arts); Sociology professors Luin Goldring and Peter Vandergeest; and Social Science professor Pablo Idahosa.

Professors Irving Abella and Martin Lockshin, who are both associated with York's Centre for Jewish Studies, are the winners of the 1998 Canadian Jewish Book Awards. Prof. Abella's award, in the biography category, is for Growing Up Jewish. Prof. Lockshin has been awarded the Penina Rubinoff Memorial Award for Biblical Scholarship for his book, Rashbam's Commentary on Exodus: An Annotated Translation.

Micken College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Cincinnati recently presented York Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar Lee Lorch with its Distinguished Alumni Award. Prof. Lorch, a world-renowned leader in hard analysis, earned his MA and PhD in mathematics at Micken in 1936 and 1941, respectively. He has made contributions to the theory of trigonometric series, summability theory and special functions, and his publications in top journals span decades.