The Michigan Society of Fellows has selected 10 new members from nearly 1,000 applicants to serve three-year appointments as postdoctoral scholars and assistant professors, beginning this fall.
The fellows were chosen for the importance and quality of their scholarship and for their interest in interdisciplinary work. During their tenure at U-M, they will teach selected courses in their affiliated departments and continue their scholarly research.
The new fellows, with their degree-granting institution, U-M research project and affiliated U-M unit, are:
• Amanda Alexander, Columbia University: “Prisons in the U.S. and South Africa/Criminal Justice and Child Welfare in the U.S.,” Department of Afroamerican and African Studies and Law School.
• Amanda Armstrong, University of California, Berkeley: “Railway Accidents and the Remaking of Labor and Affect in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain,” Department of History.
• Lydia Beaudrot, University of California, Davis: “Tropical Conservation Biology,” Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
• Jana Cephas, Harvard University: “Cooperative Living, Organized Labor, and the Struggle for Affordable Housing in New York City,” Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
• Alice Goff, University of California, Berkeley: “The God Behind the Marble: Objects and Ideas in the German Public Museum, 1779-1830,” Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Department of History.
• Ying-Hsuan Lin, University of North Carolina: “Mechanistic Insights into the Effects of Atmospheric Organic Aerosols on Human Health,” Department of Chemistry.
• Allan Lumba, University of Washington: “The Imperial Theory of Unemployment,” Department of History.
• Ana Maria Vinea, City University of New York: “Contemporary Egyptian Landscapes of Healing between Qur’anic Healing and Psychiatry,” Department of Near Eastern Studies.
• Benjamin Winger, University of Chicago: “Evolution of Geographic Range,” Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
• Rebecca Wollenberg, University of Chicago: “Becoming the People of the Book: The Jewish Turn To Text in the High Middle Ages,” Frankel Center for Judaic Studies.
Fellows appointed in previous years who will continue as members of the Society of Fellows are: Lawrence Cathles, earth and environmental sciences, and atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences; Tarek Dika, comparative literature; Michael Garratt, pathology; S.E. Kile, Asian languages and cultures; Sarah Loebman, astronomy; Yasmin Moll, anthropology; Jennifer Nelson, history of art; Leslie Rogers, art; Scott Selberg, communication studies; Beckett Sterner, philosophy; Chelsea Wood, ecology and evolutionary biology.
The Society of Fellows was founded in 1970 with grants from the Ford Foundation and Horace H. and Mary Rackham Funds. In 2007, the Mellon Foundation awarded a grant to add four Mellon Fellows annually in the humanities, expanding the number of fellowships awarded each year.
The society provides financial and intellectual support to individuals selected for professional promise and interdisciplinary interests. Competition for the fellowships is open to eligible candidates in the physical and life sciences, engineering, the social sciences, education, the humanities and the arts.
