Recent Fellows

2025 Fellows

  • Ali, Mohammad Mehdi

    University of Southern California

    Religion

    Abrogating the Word of God: Divine Justice, Moral Autonomy, and the Ontology of God in Classical Islam

    My dissertation will demonstrate how competing visions of the moral attributes of God powerfully illuminate the relationship between theology and law in the Islamic tradition.

  • Arcila-Valenzuela, Migdalia (Robert M. Adams – Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship in Philosophy)

    Cornell University

    Philosophy

    Praise, Pride, and Pedestals: The Ethics and Moral Psychology of Black and Indigenous Movements in Colombia

    My dissertation investigates the social practices and political arrangements that embody the positive emotions of praise and pride. In particular, it focuses on the role of these emotions in the struggle for social justice among Black and Indigenous communities in Colombia.

  • Buckner, Ray

    Northwestern University

    Religion

    Sensual Materialities: Buddhist Art-Making and Bodily Ethics in Queer and Trans Bangkok

    My project is an ethnographic study of thirty queer and transgender contemporary Thai Buddhist artists in Bangkok that employs participant observation and semi-structured conversations to demonstrate how artists strengthen and re-shape their relationships to their bodies, their genders, and the Buddhist path through art-making.

  • Burke, Julia

    Columbia University

    Modern World History

    Irregularities of the System: Women and Their Abortions in Nineteenth-Century Britain

    My project explores how the practice of abortion was changed by industrial capitalism, and when and why the crime of abortion was invented, through the lives of women who had them.

  • Chakraborty, Debadatta

    University of Massachusetts, Amherst

    Sociology

    Hindutva and Hinduphobia: Gendered-racialized youth mobilization and religious-nationalist politics of the Indian diaspora in the US

    This project investigates how Indian diasporic youth in the US, often inspired by multicultural perspectives and racial-religious tolerance, understand the Hindu nationalist movement and how the movement mobilizes the youth, both as supporters and as resisters.

  • Clingman, Ben

    University of Colorado at Boulder

    American History

    Dreams of an Indigenous West: Migration, Sovereignty, and Nationhood in the Early American West

    Dreams of an Indigenous West explores the centuries-long contest between Indigenous nations, European empires, and the United States for control over the future of the American West.

  • Denaud, Emilie

    University of California, Santa Barbara

    World Literature

    Plant-Based Diets and Animal-Centric Thinking Throughout the African Diaspora from 1930 to the Present-Day

    My dissertation examines the role of animal and environmental ethics in key anti-racist and anti-colonial movements –including Rastafari, the Nation of Islam, the Civil Rights Movement, Afro-futurism, and Womanism.

  • Hasan, Nomaan

    Brown University

    Anthropology

    Experiments in Cultural Difference on the Last Days of Liberalism

    My project examines how ordinary citizens forge a common political ground across differences in the face of escalating social polarization.

  • Herrmann, Mitchell

    Yale University

    Art History

    The Art of the Living: Biological Life and Aesthetic Experience in the 21st Century

    Over the past decade and a half, an ensemble of influential artists has employed living organisms in their ecological artwork, thereby posing the question– what forms might an aesthetic experience of nature take when it no longer privileges the human observer, but rather cultivates an equality and reciprocity between all life?

  • Imran, Muhammad Osama

    University of Minnesota

    Anthropology

    Breaths of Extimacy: Spectral Madness, Certainty, and Conspiracy in Sufi Ethics

    My research focuses on how certainty and suspicion co‑constitute each other in Sufi ethics

  • Joshi, Kunal

    Johns Hopkins University

    Anthropology

    Keepers of Myth and Memory: Genealogies of Tradition in a North Indian Pilgrimage Town

    While commonsense descriptions of pilgrimage priests as ‘swindler-middlemen’ preying on hapless pilgrims abound, in this dissertation project I ask what happens if we take rural pilgrims’ ritual traditions seriously—as ethical projects, say, or as projects of self-fashioning—and show how this not only affords a richer conceptual frame within which to view these interactions, but also demonstrates something of the role of pilgrimage itself as a discursive domain.

  • Keser, Emre

    University of California, Santa Cruz

    Middle Eastern Studies

    Man/Monster/State: Genealogies of the Nation-State and the (In)Human in the Late Ottoman Empire

    The history of the late Ottoman Empire and its hauntings in the present-day Turkey provide an illustrative case for how secular nation-state formations monstrously create and re-create monsters to slay and how, in return, these monsters find a way to return to unsettle these formations’ allegedly natural borders and claims to homogeneity.

  • Lana, Sofia

    University of California, San Diego

    Anthropology

    Reproducing Colonial Value Systems through Melting Glaciers: Climate Change and Contested Landscapes in the Argentine and Bolivian Andes

    My comparative ethnography in the arid Andes of Bolivia and Argentina explores the lived experiences of multiple actors near melting glaciers, focusing on resource, land, and knowledge production disputes.

  • Lopez Andraca, Arisbel

    The University of Texas at Austin

    World Literature

    Cuban Religions of African Antecedents During the Recent Religious Revival Process (1985 to present): Practices and Representations.

    My research explores the role of Cuban religions of African antecedents in the post-1985 religious revival and how their philosophical-literary systems have responded to the official paradigm shift from prohibition/persecution to freedom/tolerance.

  • Orozco-Espinel, Paula

    University of Pittsburgh

    Modern World History

    From Family Planning to Reproductive Rights: Women in the History of Birth Control in Colombia, 1964-1994

    My dissertation tells the story of how in the second half of the 20th century Colombian female healthcare providers took the country from the object of internationally orchestrated policies aimed at controlling population growth, to a global leader in reproductive rights by forging unlikely alliances with local actors from catholic priests to feminist leaders.

  • Perfetti, Ross

    University of Pennsylvania

    Anthropology

    A Syndrome of Care: Examining the Afterlife of Medical Progress

    My dissertation project is about how recognition of the longer-term impacts of critical care medicine on patients, families, and those who care for them have reshaped the ethics and accountabilities of ICU care.

  • Seigler, Carolina P.

    Princeton University

    Sociology

    A multi-method examination of sexual misconduct in religious organizations

    My research reveals a counterintuitive pattern: church hiring committees are more likely to pursue pastor candidates who have committed sexual misconduct in the past than equally qualified candidates who make no such admissions.

  • Sood, Srishti

    George Washington University

    Anthropology

    Sacred Waters, Contested Futures: The Poetics and Politics of Restoring the River Ganga in India

    My research examines the challenges to restore the sacred river Ganga in India, looking at how development prerogatives, religious practices, and social differences shape environmental action.

  • Yanez, Tara

    Tulane University

    Sociology

    Women-Led Strategies of Security and Justice in Latin American Urban Peripheries

    My dissertation explores how women in Latin American urban peripheries respond to criminal and state sanctioned violence through the creation of localized systems of justice and security to protect and add value to the lives of their loved ones.

  • Yoder, Richard T.

    Penn State University

    Modern World History

    Unorthodox Flesh: Gender, Religious Convulsions, and Charismatic Knowledge in Early Modern France

    I study a Catholic cult in eighteenth-century France that empowered lay women and privileged the voices and experiences of the disabled in new ways.

2024 Fellows

  • Abraham, Susan

    University of Virginia

    Spanish Literature; Mediterranean Literature and Religion

    Narrating Faith Across the Straits: Morisco Manuals of Faith in Tunis and the Early Modern Mediterranean

  • Alterwaite, Arielle Xena

    University of Pennsylvania

    History

    Empire of Debt: Haiti and France in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World

  • Alves, Italo (Robert M. Adams-Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellow in Philosophy)

    Loyola University Chicago

    Social Philosophy and Aesthetics

    The Social Aesthetics of Recognition

  • Croteau, Chantal

    University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

    Sociocultural Anthropology

    Contentious Relations: Kinship, Personhood, and Extractive Industry in Thailand

  • Davennes, Aurelien

    University of Southern California

    American Studies; Cultural Anthropology

    Vodou in Magic City: Migration and Subjective Formation Among the Haitian Diaspora of Miami

  • Diehr, Christene

    University of California, Berkeley

    Medieval Europe

    Paying your dues: the birth of the tithe in Carolingian Francia

  • Dinenis, Nikianna

    Princeton University

    Early Modern Europe

    Women Readers in the Holy Roman Empire, 1400-1600

  • El-Shafei, Alaa

    Columbia University

    Middle Eastern Studies

    Convicts on the Nile: Prisons and the Making of Modern Egypt

  • Freeman, S.

    University of California, Berkeley

    Geography

    Quantifying Mobility: The Politics of Humanitarian Data Collection in South Sudan

  • Garcia, Miranda

    University of Michigan

    Sociocultural Anthropology

    Entrepreneurs and the Search for Dignity in Post-Castro Cuba

  • Hoover, Hannah

    University of Michigan

    Archaeology

    Networking Households, Building a Nation: A Study of Yamasee Towns in Colonial South Carolina

  • Isaacson, Clio

    Rutgers University

    History

    Women of the Nahuatl Annals: Writing the Lives of Women in Late Pre-Hispanic and Early Colonial Mexico

  • Lawson, Sierra (Carpenter/Newcombe Fellow)

    UNC Chapel Hill

    Religion and Culture

    Spilled Milk, Spilled Blood: Breastmilk, Genealogy, and Religion in Transatlantic Spanish Empire

  • Marquardt, Savannah

    Yale University

    History of Art, Archaeology, Classics

    Chthon: Material Eschatology and Burial in Colonial Southern Italy (5th-4th c BCE)

  • Mond, Ariel

    Rutgers University – New Brunswick

    History

    Politics Imprisoned: Political Prisoners and the Making of Democracy, Decolonization, and Human Rights in Postwar France, 1945-1975

  • Ng, Kelvin

    Yale University

    Southeast Asian history; Indian Ocean history

    Vernacular Equality: Migration and Resistance in the Indian Ocean, c. 1920–1950

  • Pacyniak, Kori

    University of California, Riverside

    Queer and Trans Studies in Religion; Catholic Studies; Ethics

    Sacred Bodies, Sacred Lives: Trans Catholic Joy, Resistance, and Liberation

  • Pandya, Jiya

    Princeton University

    Modern South Asia, Disability History

    Broken Bodies, Handicapped Nation: Conceptualizing Disability and Welfare in Indian Nation-Building, 1920s-1990s

  • Scahill, Katherine

    University of Pennsylvania

    Sound Studies, Religious Studies, Buddhist Studies

    The gendered politics of religious authority in Thai Buddhism: Voice, embodiment, and sonic efficacy in the movement for female monastic ordination

  • Shaia, Fred

    Brown University

    International Relations

    Equity in a Warming World: The Global South and the Making of the International Climate Regime, 19722022

  • Thakur, Nimisha

    Syracuse University

    Anthropology

    River song: Riverine ethics and autonomy on the Brahmaputra floodplains

  • Webber, Mariah (Carpenter/Newcombe Fellow)

    University of California, Santa Barbara

    Feminist Studies

    Capturing Intimacies: Collaged Explorations of Black Sexuality in Strip Club Culture

2023 Fellows

  • DeMaio, Matt

    George Washington University

    Anthropology

    Made to Move: Placemaking and Accumulated Attachments among Palestinian Refugees from Syria

  • Dorjee, Tenzin

    Columbia University in the City of New York

    Political Science

    Religious Routes to Conflict Mitigation: Buddhism, Nationalism, and Radicalization in the Sino-Tibetan Conflict

  • Gavin, Dustin

    Yale University

    Religious Studies

    If You Buck: The Politics and Poetics of Majorette Dance

  • Hansen, Ben

    University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

    History

    Between Trepidation and Hope: Palestinian Christians after the Arab Conquests (c. 650-750 CE)

  • Henry, Kelsey

    Yale University

    American Studies

    Racing the Life Course: Anti/Black Epistemes and Ethical Foreclosures in Child Development Science, 1830 – 1980

  • Kabdylkhak, Nurlan

    University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

    History

    Muslim Institutions and Scholars of the Kazakh steppe under the Russian Tsars

  • Komal, Zunaira

    University of California-Davis

    Anthropology

    Translating the Symptom: Military Psychiatry, Islamic Cures, and Divine Calamity in Azad Kashmir

  • Koujah, Rami

    Princeton University

    Near Eastern Studies

    Islamic Legal Personhood: An Intellectual History

  • Lally, Erica

    Georgetown University

    History

    “A Grave Menace”: The American Protective League, Citizenship, and Surveillance during the First World War

  • Laurenzi, Isabelle

    Yale University

    Political Science

    “Critical Ambivalence, Intimacy, and The Politics of Transformation”

  • Law, Sam

    The University of Texas at Austin

    Department of Anthropology

    Building a Dignified Life: Urban Autonomy and the Art of Living Otherwise

  • Majumdar, Aparajita

    Cornell University

    History

    Planting Recalcitrance: Nature, Knowledge, and Heritage in a South Asian Borderland

  • Mehta, Gaurika

    Columbia University in the City of New York

    Religion

    Bearing the Burden of History: Religion and the Minority Ethics of the Indo-Caribbean Madrasi Diaspora

  • Monque, Pedro (Robert M. Adams – Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship in Philosophy)

    CUNY Graduate School and University Center

    Philosophy

    Extractivism and the Defense of Life and Territory: An Account of Latin American Environmental Thought

  • Moraes Traldi, Daniela

    CUNY Graduate School and University Center

    History

    God, Fatherland, Family: Integralismo and the Making of the Far-Right in Twentieth-Century Brazil

  • Muci Barradas, Isabela

    Princeton University

    Art and Archaeology

    The Polyphonic Forest: Photographing the Amazon, 1970-1989

  • Myriam Fitoussi, Margaux

    Columbia University in the City of New York

    Anthropology

    Jewishness and Fractured Genealogies in Tunisia

  • Peruzzi Sancio, Ariana

    University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

    Rackham

    Theorizing Displacement: On Involuntary Migration, Refugeehood, and the Right to Remain

  • Rolfsen, Avenel

    Indiana University-Bloomington

    History

    “We Won’t Wait for the State”: Humanitarianism, Solidarity, and Charity in Senegalese History, 18801970

  • Wical, Will

    University of Maryland-College Park

    Anthropology

    The Embodied Emotional Experiences of Black Men Participating in a Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Program

  • Wyer, Sean

    University of California-Berkeley

    Italian Studies

    Constructing Convivenza: Multicultural Heritage and Cosmopolitan Rhetoric in Contemporary Palermo

2022 Fellows

  • Budhathoki, Thir

    University of Arizona

    English Literature

    Linguistic Justice in Writing Studies: A Decolonial Perspective

  • Clements, Henry

    Yale University

    Middle Eastern Studies

    History and the Struggle for Distinction: The Syriac Christians of the Ottoman Empire

  • Elster, Michael

    CUNY Graduate School and University Center

    Anthropology

    Coming of Age in the Clinic: Ethics and Politics of Transgender Care in New York

  • Ferguson, Magnus (Robert M. Adams-Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellow in Philosophy)

    Boston College

    Philosophy

    On Responsibility for Others’ Harm

  • Fox-Knudtsen, Karlie

    Cornell University

    Anthropology

    Mud Spirits and Blood Power: Ethics as materiality in Kondholand

  • Girard, Gabrielle

    Princeton University

    Modern World History

    Modeling Democracy: The Global History of an Argentine Human Rights Experiment

  • Greenberg, Sarah

    Cornell University

    Political Science

    The Law is Not in Heaven: Authority and Covenant in Jewish Political Thought

  • Halcomb, Laura

    University of California-Santa Barbara

    Sociology

    Pricing life: money and morality in US healthcare

  • Hsu, Mu-Lung

    Arizona State University-Tempe

    Religion

    Engaging Suffering: Free Funeral Service Societies and a Socially Engaged Buddhist Soteriology in Contemporary Myanmar

  • Joslyn, Daniel

    New York University

    American History

    Dreamers of a New Age: God, Sex, and Socialism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

  • Kesse, Eric

    Michigan State University

    Modern World History

    Living with Water: Environment, Slavery, and Spirituality in a West African Stilt-House Community— Nzulezo, c. mid-1700—1870s

  • Kinstler, Linda

    University of California-Berkeley

    Modern World History

    The Afterlives of Oblivion

  • Levin Schwartz, Natali (Carpenter-Newcombe Fellow)

    University of California-Santa Cruz

    Political Science

    Testimony, Resistance, and Sexual Violence: Towards a Political Theory of Testimony as Democratic Practice

  • Mukherjee, Meghna

    University of California-Berkeley

    Sociology

    Immaculate Re-Conception: Redefining Health and Reproductive Risk Using Prenatal Genetic Testing

  • Nairang, Arif Hayat

    University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

    Anthropology

    Halat chi kharab: Playful Existence in the Time of Political Violence

  • Prendergast, Emma

    University of Wisconsin-Madison

    Philosophy

    The Moral Authority of Citizens

  • Rahman, Faiza

    Emory University

    Religion

    Islamic Period: Menstruation and Muslims in Pakistan

  • Rodrigo Gonzales, Paloma

    CUNY Graduate School and University Center

    Anthropology

    From Stained Souls to Stained Skins: The Presence of Religious Epistemologies in the Typification of Peruvian Bodies

  • Smith, Rachel

    University of California-Los Angeles

    Modern World History

    The Jews of Yesteryear: Ethnography and the Politics of Representation in the Late Ottoman World

  • Sohail, Jagat

    Princeton University

    Anthropology

    Life After Hospitality: Practices of Foreigner Incorporation in Berlin

  • Strayhorn, Joshua

    Duke University

    American History

    Somewhere to Lay My Head: Black Religion, Mobility, and Migration in North Carolina, 1860-1890

  • Vale, Mira

    University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

    Sociology

    Data Values: Moral Entrepreneurship in Digital Health

2021 Fellows

  • Alnusf, Marzouq

    Northwestern University

    Philosophy

    Global Racial Capitalism: How Race Matters to Global Justice

  • Berndt, Nathaniel

    Duke University

    Modern World History

    Descendants of Zabarkan, Citizens of the World: A History of Cosmopolitan Imagination in Decolonizing Niger, 1958–1974

  • Black, Valerie

    University of California-Berkeley

    Anthropology

    Dehumanizing Care: An Ethnography of Mental Health Artificial Intelligence

  • Brick, Shannon

    CUNY Graduate School and University Center

    Philosophy

    Rehabilitating Authenticity

  • DeGolan, Erez

    Columbia University in the City of New York

    Religion

    Affect in Power: Public Joy in Roman Palestine and the Lived Experience of the Rabbis

  • Hall, Amanda

    Yale University

    American History

    Global Racial Capitalism: How Race Matters to Global JusticeTriumph: Grassroots Activism against Apartheid and the Global Challenge to Anti-Black Racism, 1971– 1991

  • Hammad, Omar

    Rutgers University-New Brunswick

    Sociology

    Digital Islam: The emergence of US Muslim counterpublics on social media

  • Hariharan, Anusha

    University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

    Anthropology

    “In Solidarity”: Feminist Friendship, Care and Ethical Life in Southern India

  • Kliger, Gili

    Harvard University

    Modern World History

    Colonial Reformation: Religion, Empire, and the Origins of Modern Social Thought

  • Kulisz, Abigail

    Indiana University-Bloomington

    Religion

    Sacred Friendship, Holy Hatred: Christian-Muslim Encounters with the Book in the Medieval Middle East

  • Llaguno Nieves, Tatiana

    The New School

    Political Science

    Paradoxes of Dependence: Towards a Political Theory of Our Dependent Condition

  • Ndiaye, Gana

    Boston University

    Anthropology

    “Plastic Migrants”: Race, Performance, and the Making of a Senegalese Muslim Community in Brazil

  • Riley, Alexis

    The University of Texas at Austin

    Performance Studies

    Patient Acts: Performance, Disability, and the Making of Mad Memory

  • Rose, Kevin

    University of Virginia-Main Campus

    Religion

    Living Green: The Neoliberal Climate of Protestant Environmentalism

  • Sheu, Sherri

    University of Colorado Boulder

    American History

    “Parks to the People”: The National Park Service and the Long 1960s

  • Stamper, Aaron

    Princeton University

    Early World History

    Reconfigured and Remade: A Sensory History of Islamic Granada’s Reformation as a Civitas Christiana, 1474–1614

  • Steers-McCrum, Alexander (Robert M. Adams – Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship in Philosophy)

    Northwestern UniversityCUNY Graduate School and University Center

    Philosophy

    What Does “Native” Mean? Disentangling and Decolonizing Settler Terms and Categories

  • Taylor-Seymour, Raffaella

    University of Chicago

    Anthropology

    Intimate Rites: Localizing Queerness through Ancestral Spiritualities in Contemporary Zimbabwe

  • Urbanski, Claire

    University of California-Santa Cruz

    Gender Studies

    On Sacred and Stolen Lands: Desecration and Spiritual Violence as United States Settler Colonialism’

  • Weinberg, Tara

    University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

    Modern World History

    Land ‘Bonds’: Imaginaries of Property Ownership in South Africa, 1900–1994

  • Wisniewska, Karolina

    University of Arizona

    Philosophy

    Identity, Inequality, Injustice

  • Wright, Kristine

    Princeton University

    Religion

    Bodies of Light and Knowledge: Mormon Women, Religious Authority and Theologies of Health