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 It’s not lost on Dr. Walid Afifi that he came to �������� to give a talk about the impact of uncertainty in a time of much uncertainty. But the structural uncertainty communities are facing in the United States and across the world is exactly the reason the communication professor from the University of California Santa Barbara says the topic needs to be discussed. Afifi gave the lecture entitled “Understanding the Role of Structural Conditions in the Experience of Uncertainty: Toward a Chronic Uncertainty Framework” as the recipient of the 2025 Paul H. Boase Prize.

“The Boase Prize is a really huge honor. I’m humbled for sure,” said Afifi. “I looked at the list of folks who have received it before me, and first of all, I knew this was a really important honor. Then, I saw the list and it’s intimidating. It’s fantastic, and I’m really humbled and honored by it.”

The first Boase Prize was awarded in 2003. Boase (1915-2000) was the founding director of the School of Interpersonal Communication (now the School of Communication Studies) at �������� and was a nationally known scholar of public address. The Boase Prize honors scholars who have made an outstanding contribution to the discipline through recent scholarship (in any area of Communication) that has had a major influence on the direction of scholarship within the field. The award is given to a person whose scholarship reflects the spirit of Paul Boase—his dedication to others, his commitment to making a difference, and his love of learning. Recipients receive a $2,000 honorarium and are invited to come to the �������� campus for a public presentation of scholarship on a topic of their choosing. Afifi gave his presentation on Monday, March 3, in Schoonover 145.

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“I grew up in various places around the world, but I consider Iowa City my second home and coming to Athens reminds me of the beauty of Iowa City,” said Afifi.

During his talk, Afifi explained his work around studying the mental health impacts of uncertainty. He studies communal and chronic uncertainty. Examples include refugee communities that don't know where they're going to live or disabled communities that are experiencing uncertainties about key parts of their lives for a long period of time.

“I've been working on that because surprisingly there's actually very few scholars who have looked at that, and it's such an increasingly obvious thing. I think COVID really made that clear in how long we all lived with uncertainty,” said Afifi. “But there hasn’t really been a systematic look at uncertainty. There’s been a systematic look at stress and chronic stress. Stress and uncertainty are related. But they’re also separable.”

Afifi talked about the definition of uncertainty, the definition of chronic uncertainty, some of the key issues that communities are chronically uncertain about and the effects of those chronic uncertainties. 

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“Dr. Afifi gave us a gift and a challenge: to recognize the limits of a transitory and individualistic model of uncertainty," Dr. Lynn Harter, chair of the Awards and Recognitions Committee of the School of Communication Studies, said. "As citizens of the world, we have an opportunity to acknowledge and respond to the sustained and shared dimensions of uncertainty that accompany trauma and violence. Attention to individual resilience is necessary but insufficient if we fail to address forces that put individuals and communities at risk.”

“What we’re finding is in some ways not surprising,” said Afifi. “There are big neurological effects. So, it literally can change the structure of our brain if we are chronically uncertain for a long time and especially if we are chronically uncertain at times in our life when our brain development is at its peak. Chronic uncertainty can have very, very real consequences for our brain.”

To learn more about Afifi’s research, visit .