Former Russell Sage Foundation president Eric Wanner has won the 2019 Distinguished Career Award for the Practice of Sociology from the American Sociological Association (ASA). Wanner served as president of RSF from 1986–2013. Under his leadership the foundation launched several new research initiatives, redesigned the visiting scholars program, and overhauled the publications program to give the foundation’s research wider distribution and public impact.

Prior to joining RSF, Wanner was vice president and a program officer at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He obtained a doctorate in psychology from Harvard University, and served on the faculties at Harvard, Rockefeller University, and the University of Sussex before turning to foundation work. Wanner was the 2011 Eleanor Roosevelt Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a former Fulbright Fellow and former Fellow of the New York Institute of the Humanities.

ASA awardees are selected by committees directly appointed by the ASA Council and will be honored during a ceremony on August 11 at the Association’s 2019 Annual Meeting in New York City. 

Read the announcement from ASA.