Stanford Humanities Center
The new cohort will span undergraduate students to senior scholars, including Hume Honors Fellows to be appointed in the fall.
The Stanford Humanities Center (SHC) will welcome nearly 50 new and returning fellows in the upcoming 2025–26 academic year. They range from undergraduate students to tenured faculty and represent humanistic scholarship in anthropology, art history, comparative literature, East Asian studies, English, history, linguistics, philosophy, political science, religious studies, sociology, theater and performance studies, urban studies, and other fields. In the collegial environment of the Center, the fellows will pursue individual research projects, share ideas in seminars and lectures, and participate in the many workshops and public events that fill the Center’s calendar.
Among them are eight faculty fellows chosen from within Stanford: Nora Barakat (History), Margaret Cohen (English), Branislav Jakovljević (Theater and Performance Studies), Paula Moya (English), Fatoumata Seck (French and Italian), Mudit Trivedi (Anthropology), Laura Wittman (French and Italian), and Alex Woloch (English).
From a large and highly competitive group of external faculty applicants, eight fellowships have also been awarded to Esra Akcan (Cornell University), Johaina Crisostomo (Johns Hopkins University), Amanda Hall (University of California, Santa Barbara), Sora Han (University of California, Irvine), Christina Hughes (Macalester College), AJ Kim (San Diego State University), Charu Singh (University of Cambridge), and Lynn Stephen (University of Oregon).
They’ll be joined by nine Stanford PhD students: five who were awarded Dissertation Prize Fellowships and four named Next Generation Scholars. Launched in 2021, the Next Generation Scholar Program is the Center’s newest fellowship. It supports Stanford graduate students in year seven or above whose work demonstrates the highest distinction and the promise of future achievement. To date, eight of twelve recipients have gone on to either postdoctoral fellowships or tenure-track positions.
The Center will also welcome 11 Mellon postdoctoral fellows—recent PhDs at the start of their careers who pursue research while teaching courses as a lecturer in a Stanford humanities department. Offered as a two-year term (with the possibility of a third-year extension), the Mellon Fellowship is directed by Kären Wigen, Frances and Charles Field Professor in History at Stanford.
In the fall, the Center will add to its fellowship community 10 undergraduate Hume Honors Fellows writing their senior theses on humanities topics.
Additionally, the Center offers support to up to seven Stanford graduate students to serve as Digital Public Fellows, working in an editorial role with other SHC Fellows and speakers to identify topics and solicit content in all media to publish on Arcade, the open-access site that forms an integral part of the SHC’s digital platform.
“Each year we continue to diversify our fellowship community and find new ways of supporting advanced research,” says Humanities Center director Roland Greene. “It’s particularly gratifying to select fellows whose projects seem likely to complement one another. Throughout the course of the year—over lunches, weekly research talks, and casual interactions—our fellows enrich their understanding of their own research and learn from each others’ work.”
The Center's fellowships are made possible by gifts and grants from the following individuals, foundations, and Stanford offices: The Esther Hayfer Bloom Estate, Theodore H. and Frances K. Geballe, Mimi and Peter Haas, Marta Sutton Weeks, the Mericos Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the office of the Dean of Humanities and Sciences.
The Center will begin accepting applications for the 2026–27 academic year in August. Details about fellowships, including application instructions and eligibility, are available online.
About the Stanford Humanities Center
Established in 1980, the Stanford Humanities Center sponsors advanced research in the humanities and the interpretive social sciences by investing in experiences—fellowships, workshops, lectures, and other events—that enrich research in and across the disciplines. Through a partnership with the renowned Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA), the Humanities Center embraces emerging digital methods to complement traditional kinds of analysis and interpretation. Together, the Stanford Humanities Center and CESTA serve as the hub of an international network of fellows, visiting scholars, students, and alumni. For further information, please visit shc.stanford.edu.
2025–26 Fellows and Projects
Eduardo Acosta
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, University of Chicago
Department of History, Stanford University
A River of Ruined Capitals: History and Environmental Change in Early Modern Bengal
Esra Akcan
External Faculty Fellow
Department of Architecture, Cornell University
A History of the World Made by Modern Architecture
Jonathan Atkins
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of English, Stanford University
To Continue to End: Verse and the Performance of the Limit
Harleen Bagga
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University
Possessing Souls/Sizing Bodies: Gaudenzio Ferrari and the Immersive Magic of the Italian Renaissance
Nora Barakat
Internal Faculty Fellow
Department of History, Stanford University
Credit Oases: The Legacies of Ottoman Law and the History of Capitalism from Palestine to the Persian Gulf
Farah Bazzi
Next Generation Scholar
Department of History, Stanford University
The Alluring Aesthetic of Andalusī Nature: Conquest, Settlement Practices, and the Shaping of Racial Landscapes across the Early Modern Mediterranean and Beyond (1550–1666)
Erica Camisa Morale
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, University of Southern California
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stanford University
The Vanishing Dead Body and the Emerging Persona in Early Modern East Slavic Lyrics
Chris Chan
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, University of California, Berkeley
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University
Seeing the Spectral State: Island Media, Symbolic Power, and Creative Recognition in the Taiwan Strait
Margaret Cohen
Internal Faculty Fellow
Department of English, Stanford University
Ocean Science for the Ocean Humanities: The Case of Monterey Bay
Johaina Crisostomo
External Faculty Fellow
Department of English, Johns Hopkins University
Imperfect Sacrifice: The Crisis of Political Imagination in Transimperial Philippines (1896–1935)
Madison Dalton
Next Generation Scholar
Department of Political Science, Stanford University
The Politics of Justice: Understanding Sexual Violence in the United States
Samia Errazzouki
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, University of California, Davis
Department of History, Stanford University
The Saharan Passage: Sugar, Slavery, and Empire in the African Atlantic
Julien Fischer
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, Duke University
Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Stanford University
The Lure of Origins: Sexology and the Trans Autobiographical Mandate
Mario A. Gómez Zamora
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, University of California, Santa Cruz
Department of Theater and Performance Studies, Stanford University
Queerness and Gender Performance in Indigenous P’urhépecha Communities in Michoacán and the United States
Gaby Greenlee
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, University of California, Santa Cruz
Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University
Inka Borders and the Power of Volatility: On the Fringes and Edges of Textile and Territory
Amanda Hall
External Faculty Fellow
Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara
Shantytown Solidarities: Black Consciousness and Global Anti-Apartheid
Sora Han
External Faculty Fellow
Department of Criminology, Law, and Society, University of California, Irvine
Break Law: When Artists Take Legal Matter Into Their Own Hands
Christina Hughes
External Faculty Fellow
Department of Sociology, Macalester College
Bad Refugees: Manufacturing Statelessness at the Margins of Global Northern Citizenship
Branislav Jakovljević
Internal Faculty Fellow
Department of Theater and Performance Studies, Stanford University
Theaters of Atrocities: On Ethical Limits of Performance
Marina Johnson
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of Theater and Performance Studies, Stanford University
On This Land: Palestinian Performance from 2015–2025
Paul Johnston
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, Harvard University
Department of Classics, Stanford University
Roman Literature in Greek and Latin: Bilingualism, Empire and the Shaping of the Classical Canon
AJ Kim
External Faculty Fellow
Department of City Planning, San Diego State University
Mapping the Immigrant Rights Movement in the American South
Antonio López
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Program in Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford University
Hood Playin' Tricks on Me: Gentrification, Grief, and the Ghosts of East Palo Alto
Ali Madani
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, Brown University
Department of English, Stanford University
Categorical Fictions: Literary History, Colonialism, and the Forms of Early Modern English
Paula Moya
Internal Faculty Fellow
Department of English, Stanford University
Dark Aesthetics: The Decolonial Possibilities of Multifocal Narratives
Jesuseyi Osundeko
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of English, Stanford University
Feminine Sorrow: Contours of Gendered Self-Mourning in African and Black Diasporic Literature
Timothy Pantoja
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, New York University
Department of African and African American Studies, Stanford University
Compelling Insinuations: Black Reflections on Empathy
Sunil Persad
Next Generation Scholar
Department of Religious Studies, Stanford University
A Social Biography of Bones in Late Antiquity
Joshua Phillips
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, Yale University
Department of Linguistics, Stanford University
At the Intersection of Temporal and Modal interpretation: Essays on Irreality
Fatoumata Seck
Internal Faculty Fellow
Department of French and Italian, Stanford University
African Literatures of Revolution
Charu Singh
External Faculty Fellow
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge
The Shastri and the Air-Pump: Science and Sensibility in Modern India
Lynn Stephen
External Faculty Fellow
Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon
Invisible No More! Transborder Mesoamerican Indigenous Territories, Languages, and Communities in Diaspora
Mudit Trivedi
Internal Faculty Fellow
Department of Anthropology, Stanford University
Discipline and Pleasure: Archaeologies of Virtue, Faith and Envy
César Valenzuela
Next Generation Scholar
Department of Philosophy, Stanford University
Climate Democracy: A Philosophical Framework
Laura Wittman
Internal Faculty Fellow
Department of French and Italian, Stanford University
Death on TV: Unconventional Experiments with Grief and Mortality
Alex Woloch
Internal Faculty Fellow
Department of English, Stanford University
Partial Representation: On Realism and Inequality
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