Quick access:
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