KENNEBUNK — Dr. Patricia Leavy of Kennebunk was recently announced as the recipient of the 2014 American Creativity Association Special Achievement Award. The ACA honors achievements in innovation and creativity in all fields, from medicine to technology to education.

The award has been bestowed upon pioneers including astronaut John Glenn, Jack Kilby, inventor of the microchip, and Ann Medlock, journalist and founder of Giraffe Heroes Project, as well as corporate groups including LEGO and Pixar Animation Studios.

Leavy is the first sociologist to receive this honor, and is receiving this award for her work advancing arts-based research. Arts-based research merges the creative arts with scientific or social research in order to make the products of research more accessible to the public (scholarly research may be represented as a play, visual art installation, or novel, for instance). Leavy is the founding editor for the Social Fictions book series, which is the first book series ever published by an academic press to publish books written entirely in literary forms but grounded in scholarly research. They publish novels, plays, short story and poetry collections written by leading scholars and covering a range of social issues.

Leavy is receiving her award this Friday, Sept. 12 in Philadelphia.