The Michigan Society of Fellows has selected five new members out of 961 applications 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 the University of Michigan they will teach selected courses in their affiliated departments and continue their scholarly research.
The new fellows, with their affiliated department at Michigan, their degree-granting institution, and their research project are:
• Aniket Aga — School of Natural Resources and the Environment; Yale University: “Cultivating Sustainability, Cultivating Knowledge: Experiments in Agriculture in Western India”
• Tierra Bills — Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering; University of California, Berkeley: “Social Equity Analysis for Large-scale Transportation and Civil Systems”
• Kevin Ko — Department of History, LSA; Yale University: “Medicine, Religion, and the Public Sphere in Modern Indonesia”
• Zhiying Ma — Department of Anthropology, LSA; The University of Chicago: “Insanity, Intimacy, and Institution: Governance and Care Under the Mental Health Legal Reform in Contemporary China”
• Kelli Wood — Department of the History of Art, LSA; The University of Chicago: “The Art of Play: Games in Early Modern Italy”
A sixth fellow deferred her fellowship for one year.
Fellows appointed in previous years who will continue as members of the Society of Fellows are: Amanda Alexander, Afroamerican and African studies, and Law School; Amanda Armstrong, history; Lydia Beaudrot, ecology and evolutionary biology; Jana Cephas, architecture; Michael Garratt, pathology; Alice Goff, Germanic languages and literatures, and history; Ying-Hsuan Lin, chemistry; Sarah Loebman, astronomy (recipient of outside funding); Allan Lumba, history; Yasmin Moll, anthropology; Leslie Rogers, art; Scott Selberg, communication studies; Ana Maria Vinea, Near Eastern studies; Benjamin Winger, ecology and evolutionary biology; Rebecca Wollenberg, Judaic studies; and Chelsea Wood, ecology and evolutionary biology.
The Michigan Society of Fellows was founded in 1970 with grants from the Ford Foundation and Horace H. and Mary Rackham Funds. 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.
