Grant News

Meredith McCoy, Assistant Professor of American Studies and History, has received support to research Indigenous experiences from four separate funders.

• An Institute for Citizen’s & Scholars (ICS) Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty supports her project “Recovering Indigenous Children’s Experiences under Relocation.”
• As a participant in the Curriculum Inquiry Writing Fellowship and Writers’ Retreat in Toronto, Prof. McCoy will explore Native feminist teaching commitments, arguing that a pedagogical focus on contemplation and contribution in the college-level classroom can help students connect and reflect as they learn histories of genocide.
• A Whiting Foundation Public Engagement Fellowship funds collaboration with the Newberry Library, Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative, and other members of the Chicago Native community to investigate the long history of Indigenous Chicago and create an exhibit, curricular and digital materials, an oral history project, and public programming.
• The Phillips Fund for Native American Research of the American Philosophical Society supports Prof. McCoy’s research costs including compensating community partners who will form a local advisory board, while examining the formative period of the 1940s and 1950s when the number of Native families in cities rose significantly.

Amna Khalid, Associate Professor of History, and Jeff Snyder, Associate Professor of Educational Studies have been named to the 2022-2023 Class of Fellows of the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. Their project “Anti-CRT Bills Come to Campus: Documenting and Analyzing Emerging Threats to Free Expression and Academic Freedom from State Legislatures” will examine anti-CRT bills targeting higher education and track how they are being implemented and challenged on campuses in different states. Prof. Khalid and Prof. Snyder will create a resource guide for campus stakeholders to better understand the impact of these bills on free expression and academic freedom, and produce a set of podcast episodes to explain the significance of these bills to a broader audience.

Dan Maxbauer, Assistant Professor of Geology, has been awarded a grant from the Engeseth-Rinde Restoration Fund of Northfield SHARES for his project “Evaluating potential of enhanced weathering for carbon dioxide removal in the Prairie Creek Wildlife Management Area.” During 2022, this project will include soil sampling, analysis, and monitoring of CO₂ flux in hopes of developing carbon offset markets that may benefit land-owners transitioning agricultural land back to more native environments. This work builds on a recent soil survey conducted at the site as part of a Geology Comps project and will add another dataset for the site to be available for future class and Comps projects.

Seth Peabody, Assistant Professor of German, has been selected as a Mellon Periclean Faculty Leader (PFL) in the Humanities. The program will provide support for developing a community-based project within a new A&I seminar entitled “Seeking Shelter in a Dangerous World.” In partnership with Greater Northfield Sustainability Collaborative (GNSC), first-year students will gather input on environmental issues, learn about a sense of “home” from diverse stakeholders in the community, and hone humanistic skills while tackling real-world problems.

Vasilii Vaganov, Class of 2024 and student researcher with Rou-Jia Sung (Assistant Professor of Biology), has been awarded the 2022 ASBMB (American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) Undergraduate Research Award to purchase supplies for research during summer 2022.

Allison Murphy, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, is the recipient of a National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) Summer Stipend for her project, “Flourishing with Others: Aristotle on Friendship.” During summer 2022 Prof. Murphy will research and write a journal article on Aristotle’s view of the role of friendship in the good human life as part of a larger project that challenges the dominant scholarly theory and offers a new appraisal of friendship within his larger ethical framework.

Dan Hernández, Professor of Biology, has been funded by the General Mills Foundation through a contract from Freshwater Society to pursue research on regenerative agriculture. Prof. Hernández will visit regional farms to measure soil greenhouse gas fluxes, carbon storage, and nutrient availability for a Life Cycle Assessment of the regenerative poultry production methods of the Regenerative Ag Alliance.

Matt Whited, Associate Professor of Chemistry, received a Research Opportunity Award (ROA) award from the National Science Foundation to support sabbatical research at University of North Carolina in the laboratory of Prof. Alex Miller, exploring new electrochemical approaches to catalysis and building a repertoire of skills to support his ongoing NSF-funded research with Carleton students.

Alex Knodell, Associate Professor of Classics and Director of Archaeology, is the recipient of a fellowship from the Loeb Classical Library Foundation for his work on the Small Cycladic Islands Project. This grant will support sabbatical time for Prof. Knodell to work on the analysis and publication of archaeological fieldwork and lidar-based remote sensing, focused on the history of occupation and use across about 50 small, currently uninhabited islands in the Cycladic Archipelago of Greece. The project will produce a series of multidisciplinary studies of island landscapes and new insights into human and natural history.

Sarah Kennedy, Robert A. Oden, Jr. Postdoctoral Fellow for Innovation in the Humanities and Archaeology, has been awarded an Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) grant from the Julie Herzig Desnick Endowment Fund for Archaeological Field Surveys. This funding for her project, Out of the Mine and Into the Furnace: the Ongoing Environmental Impacts of Silver Refining in Peru, supports geophysical surveys at colonial silver refineries in Puno, Peru during the July 2022 fieldwork season, subsequent laboratory analysis of samples by an Australian collaborator, and dissemination of results via journal articles and book manuscript.