In late February of 2022, the Office of the Chancellor at IUPU announced that Dr. Paul R. Mullins of the Anthropology Department in the IU School of Liberal Arts was chosen to receive the Chancellor’s Professor Award – only one of two chancellor’s professorships awarded across the IUPUI campus for the year.
Being named a Chancellor’s Professor is the most distinguished appointment an individual faculty member can attain at IUPUI. The award was created to recognize senior faculty members who display a record of extensive accomplishment and leadership in teaching, research, and campus service – all qualities embodied and demonstrated by Dr. Mullins’ remarkable career.
Paul Mullins is an historical archaeologist who studies the intersection of materiality and the color line, focusing on the relationship between racism, consumption, and urban displacement. His scholarship has included archaeological excavations, documentary research, and oral history, and his scholarship has spanned the globe. The research on the history of our own IUPUI campus produced an invaluable oral history collection, The Price of Progress: IUPUI, the Color Line, and Urban Displacement, which was co-edited with community partner Glenn White. The book illuminates the legacy of urban renewal and the erasure of African-American life in the near-Westside.
In addition to being widely published in his field, Dr. Mullins’ important contributions to the field of Anthropology have garnered much admiration and earned prestigious honors. In 2012 Paul was awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to teach and do research at the University of Oulu in Finland. In 2017, along with his Anthropology Department colleague Dr. Hyatt, Mullins was named one of the inaugural Charles R. Bantz Chancellor’s Community Fellows for their work examining the history and material culture in a series of Indianapolis neighborhoods that have been effaced, ignored, or misrepresented in public discourse.
The award will be official conferred at a ceremony in April, and it will see Dr. Mullins become just the 12th recipient from the IU School of Liberal in the award’s history. Far more than an honorific, Chancellor’s Professors enjoy a special consultative relationship with the IUPUI chancellor and often serve as mentors for colleagues as well as resources for faculty development, student learning, and professional research and service.
Dr. Mullins has made translational research knowledge available to professionals, researchers, students, and communities around the world. His work has been an exemplary model of IUPUI faculty members translating research in to practice for the betterment of their fields and communities. The IU School of Liberal Arts congratulates Dr. Paul Mullins on being named Chancellor’s Professor and are proud to call him a colleague and friend.
