Emerging Areas in the Humanities Fellows

In January 2015, the Mellon Foundation awarded a grant of $2,050,000 to HRI to support the development of emerging areas in the humanities.

The funds support fellowships for Illinois faculty and graduate students, and undergraduate interns, as well as post-doctoral fellows, creating robust research groups in three areas: Bio-Humanities, Environmental Humanities, and Legal Humanities.

Legal Humanities

Faculty Fellows

2021-22

Colleen Murphy (Roger and Stephany Joslin Professor of Law, Professor of Philosophy and Political Science, Acting Executive Director of the Illinois Global Institute)

2020-21

A. Naomi Paik (Asian American Studies)

Post-Doctoral Fellows

2020-22

Sabeen Ahmed (PhD, Philosophy, Vanderbilt University, 2020)
“Coloniality and the Racial Ontopolitics of Law: Foucault's Juridical Power Reconsidered"

Beverly Fok (PhD, Anthropology, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 2020)  
"Kinship of Territories” 

Pre-Doctoral Fellows

2021-22

Claire Branigan (Anthropology)
“Ineffective Laws, Active Citizens: Creating Justice in the aftermath of Femicidio in Argentina"

Ian Toller-Clark (History)  
"Carceral Democracy: Race, Prisons, and the Realignment of Politics in Wisconsin, 1940–1972”


2020-21

Brenda Garcia (Anthropology)
“NecroSecurity: Youth, Death and Life in the State of Right"

Silvia Escanilla Huerta (History)  
"A Fragmented Sovereignty. Indigenous People, War and Political Change in the Process of Independence in the Viceroyalty of Peru (1783–1828)”
Undergraduate Interns

2021-22

Thomas Ballard, Political Science and Economics
Alice Lee, Political Science and Psychology
Alex Wellman, Economics and Political Science

2020-21

Buthania Hattab, Political Science
Maria T. Martinez, English
Adem Osmani, Political Science

Environmental Humanities

Faculty Fellow

2018-2020

Bob Morrissey (History)

Post-Doctoral Fellows

2018-20

Leah Aronowsky (PhD, History of Science, Harvard University, 2018)
“Configuring the Planetary Environment as a Scientific Object”

Pollyana Rhee (PhD, Architecture, Columbia University, 2018)
“Designing Natural Advantages: Environmental Visions, Civic Ideals, and Architecture for Community, 1920–1970”

Pre-Doctoral Fellows

2018-19

Samantha Good (Spanish and Portuguese)
“Negotiated Ecologies: Indigeneity and Ecocriticism in 19th-Century Bolivia and Chile”

Alexandra Paterson (English)
“Geological Bodies: The Earth and Narratives of the Self in Romantic-Period Britain, 1784–1820”

2019–20

Douglas Jones, History
“The Cult of the Yankee Mining Engineer: Engineering Nature, Race, and Labor in the US, Canada, and South Africa, 1886–1922”

Jessica Landau, Art History
“‘Critical Habitat’: Picturing Conservation, Extinction, and the American Animal in the Long Twentieth Century”

Undergraduate Interns

2019-20

Alaina Bottens, Natural Resources & Environmental Sciences / Gender & Women’s Studies
Sarah Gediman, History / Earth, Society & Environmental Sustainability
Amanda Watson,English / Political Science

2018–19

Juan Martin Luna Nunez (Urban Studies and Planning)
Clara Pokorny (Urban Studies and Planning)
April Wendling (Geography and Earth Society & Environmental Sustainability, minor in Integrative Biology)

Bio-Humanities

Faculty Fellow

2016–2018

Samantha Frost (Political Science / Gender and Women's Studies)

Post-Doctoral Fellows

2016–2018

Rosine Kelz (PhD, Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, 2014)
“Beyond the human?': Concepts of Humanity, Responsibility, and Agency in Political Theory and Biotechnology”

Daniel Liu (PhD, History of Science, Medicine, and Technology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2016)
“Vision and Calculation of Living Matter”

Pre-Doctoral Fellows

2016–17

Lydia Crafts (History)
“Empire’s Laboratory: Race, Ethics, and Medical Experimentation in Guatemala during the Cold War”

Rebecah Pulsifer (English)
“Signifying Nothing: Intelligence and Intellectual Disability in British Modernism”

2017–18

Robert Rouphail (History)
“Disastrous Kinships: Nature, Gender, and Resilience in Moder Mauritius, 1892–1980”

Michael Uhall (Political Science)
“Companion Ecologies”
Undergraduate Interns

2016–17

Sneha Adusumilli (Molecular and Cellular Biology)
Miranda Dawson (Bioengineering)
Sana Khadri (English and Integrative Biology)
 

2017–18

Victoria Halewicz (Psychology, minor in Communication)
Hyun Park (Psychology and English)
Henry Yeary (English)