mellon international dissertation research fellowship

International Dissertation Research Fellowship International Dissertation Research Fellowship Competition

The Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF), now closed, offered six to twelve months of support to graduate students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who are enrolled in PhD programs in the United States and conducting dissertation research about US Indigenous or non-US cultures and societies. The IDRF program especially highlighted applicants from underrepresented institutions. Sixty fellowships were awarded annually. Fellowship amounts varied depending on the research plan, with a per-fellowship average of $23,000. The fellowship included participation in an SSRC-funded interdisciplinary workshop upon completion of IDRF-funded research.

News & Events

Announcing the 2022 International Dissertation Research Fellows

Seventy Scholars Awarded International Dissertation Research Fellowships

Related work.

The International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) Program supports the next generation of scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences pursuing research that advances knowledge about US Indigenous or non-US cultures and societies.

Privacy Overview

International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) Program

The Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) offers six to twelve months of support to graduate students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who are enrolled in PhD programs in the United States and conducting dissertation research on Native American or non-US topics.

The program invites proposals for dissertation research conducted, in whole or in part, outside the United States , on non-US topics. It will consider applications for dissertation research grounded in a single site, informed by broader cross-regional and interdisciplinary perspectives, as well as applications for multi-sited, comparative, and transregional research. Proposals that address Native American studies or identify the United States as a case for comparative inquiry are welcome; however, proposals that focus predominantly or exclusively on the United States are not eligible.

Applicants from select disciplines within the humanities (Art History, Architectural History, Classics, Drama/Theater, Film Studies, Literature, Musicology, Performance Studies, Philosophy, Political Theory, and Religion) may request three or more months of funding for international on-site dissertation research in combination with site-specific research in the United States , for a total of nine to twelve months of funding. All other applicants (for instance, those in Anthropology, Geography, History, Political Science, and Sociology, among others) must request nine to twelve months of on-site, site-specific dissertation research with a minimum of six months of research outside of the United States .

Up to 1 year

The program is open to graduate students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences-regardless of citizenship-enrolled in PhD programs in the United States . Applicants to the 2021 IDRF competition must complete all PhD requirements except on-site research by the time the fellowship begins or by December 2021, whichever comes first.

Research within the United States must be site-specific (e.g., at a particular archive) and cannot be at the applicant ‘s home institution unless that institution has necessary site-specific research holdings. Please note that the IDRF program supports research only and may not be used for dissertation write-up.

< https://www.ssrc.org/about/contact-us/

University of Missouri

Office of global and national fellowships, international dissertation research fellowship (idrf).

https://www.ssrc.org/programs/idrf/

The Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) offers nine to twelve months of support to graduate students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who are enrolled in PhD programs in the United States and conducting dissertation research on non-US topics.

Eligibility

The program is open to graduate students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences—regardless of citizenship—enrolled in PhD programs in the United States.

Award Benefits

Eighty fellowships are awarded annually. Fellowship amounts vary depending on the research plan, with a per-fellowship average of $20,000. The fellowship includes participation in an SSRC-funded interdisciplinary workshop upon the completion of IDRF-funded research.

September 30, 2019

Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship — 11/5/2019

By Sarah McClure

The Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) offers nine to twelve months of support to graduate students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who are enrolled in Ph.D. programs in the United States and conducting dissertation research on non-US topics. Seventy fellowships are awarded annually. Fellowship amounts vary depending on the research plan, with a per-fellowship average of $22,000. The fellowship includes participation in an SSRC-funded interdisciplinary workshop upon the completion of IDRF-funded research.

Applicants from select disciplines within the humanities (Art History, Architectural History, Classics, Drama/Theater, Film Studies, Literature, Musicology, Performance Studies, Philosophy, Political Theory, and Religion) may request three or more months of funding for international on-site dissertation research in combination with site-specific research in the United States, for a total of nine to twelve months of funding. All other applicants (for instance, those in Anthropology, Geography, History, Political Science, and Sociology, among others) must request nine to twelve months of on-site, site-specific dissertation research with a minimum of six months of research outside of the United States.

Eligibility

The program is open to graduate students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences—regardless of citizenship—enrolled in Ph.D. programs in the United States. Applicants to the 2020 IDRF competition must complete all Ph.D. requirements except on-site research by the time the fellowship begins or by December 2020, whichever comes first.

The deadline to apply is November 5, 2019. For more information, visit Social Science Research Council website .

• Become a Member
• Renew Your Membership
• Member Portal
• Using the Member Portal
• Affiliate Groups
• Chapters & Partners
• Member Stories
• SAH Commons

Conferences

• Virtual 2024
• SAH 2025 Atlanta
• Past Conferences

Publications

Latest issue:.

• JSAH Online
• SAH Archipedia
• Buildings of the United States
• SAH Newsletter
• SAH Data Project

Public Programs

• SAH CONNECTS
• SAH Celebrates
• Charnley-Persky House Tours

Member Programs

• Member Meetups
• Method Acts
• GAHTC Workshops
• Graduate Student Book Group
• Graduate Student Lightning Talks

Award Programs

• Publication Awards
• Award for Film & Video
• SAH Fellows
• SAH | Places Prize
• Brownlee Dissertation Award

Jobs & Opportunities

• SAH Career Center
• Submit an Opportunity
• Browse Opportunities
• Digital Resources
• Graduate Student Resources

Fellowships

• Research Fellowships
• Annual Conference Fellowships
• H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellowship
• Membership Grants
• Field Trips Grants
• Support SAH
• Pull Together Campaign
• Donor Recognition
• Advertising
• Board of Directors
• SAH IDEAS Initiative
• Preservation Advocacy
• Charnley-Persky House

Jobs & Opportunities

Find and post jobs in architectural history, architecture, historic preservation, architectural studies, and the built environment.

Browse Jobs

Links to architectural archives, image collections, historic preservation resources and more.

Information on fellowships, publishing sources, graduate programs, dissertations, and other resources for graduate students.

• Professional Resources

Links to guidelines, case studies, best practices, professional organizations and more.

Recent Opportunities

Browse the latest opportunities published to the SAH website.

• SAH Indigenous Architecture Affiliate Group
• Chapters and Partners
• SAH Member Stories
• 2024 Virtual Conference Registration
• Call for Papers
• Booklists and Exhibition Catalog Lists
• Chicago Architects Project
• Graduate Student Programs
• 2021 Photo Gallery
• Study Programs
• SAH Member Meetups
• Opportunities
• SAH Fellowships and Grants
• Pull Together
• SAH Committees
• Visit The House
• Virtual Tour

Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs

Fellowships & Scholarships

Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship

Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship offers support to graduate students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who are enrolled in PhD programs in the United States and conducting dissertation research on non-US topics.

• Close Search Overlay

Discover CALS

See how our current work and research is bringing new thinking and new solutions to some of today's biggest challenges.

• Agriculture
• Applied Economics
• Climate Change
• Communication
• Environment
• Global Development
• Health + Nutrition

Maria Taylor

Assistant Professor, Landscape Architecture

Maria C. Taylor is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Cornell University.

As an interdisciplinary scholar and historian of North America and the “Second World,” she examines how culture, urbanism, modernization, and professional design practice mutually influence society-nature relations in the modern era. Her current research and writing focuses in particular on the transnational history of urban greening, industrialization, and environmental politics, particularly in Siberia, Central Asia, and other regions of the then Soviet Union. By bringing insights about Soviet and socialist cities and environmental relations into conversations that have historically foregrounded First World examples, this work contributes to a larger cross-disciplinary project of recognizing diverse, global histories of modernity and place-making.

Taylor has presented papers at national and international conferences including the Society of Architectural Historians, the American Society of Environmental Historians, the Society of American City and Regional Planning Historians, and the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies. In 2022-23 she was a Princeton-Mellon Fellow in Architecture, Urbanism and the Humanities, after previously having taught landscape history and urban planning at the University of Washington College of Built Environments in Seattle. Her research has also been supported by the Fulbright IIE program, a Mellon Fellowship in Urban Landscapes at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library in Washington, D.C., and the Social Science Research Council DPDF and IDRF grants.

Taylor’s current book manuscipt, Civic Engineering: The Soviet Dream of Green Cities examines the history of urban environmental design, greening, and environmental politics in the USSR, focusing on the mutual influence of urbanism, modernism, and environmentalism from the 1930s through the 1960s. Her teaching interests include the history of global and North American landscape design and urban planning; the history and theory of industrial and post-industrial site design/remediation; the art, material culture and everyday politics of the Cold War; international and US environmental history (particularly of the Rockies and intermountain West), and spatial history/cartography. 

Recent Publications:

• “To Eradicate the Vestiges:” Ivan Nikolaev and the Green Reconstruction of Soviet Factories, 1933-1938” in Detroit–Moscow–Detroit: An Architecture for Industrialization, 1917–1945 , edited by Jean-Louis Cohen, Christina C. Crawford and Claire Zimmerman. MIT Press, 2023.
• “Green Infrastructure or Civic Engineering?” Roundtable: Rethinking the Urban Landscape. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians September 2022; 81(3): 268–298.

Recent Research

history/theory of landscape design, planning, architecture

climate justice and hazard mitigation

comparative and transnational

urban environmental history

Soviet and post-Soviet studies

ecosystem services, city-nature relations

Awards & Honors

• Princeton-Mellon Fellowship in Architecture, Urbanism and the Humanities, Princeton 2022-23
• Climate and Environmental Justice Faculty Institute, UW Seattle, Winter 2022
• Distinguished Dissertation Award in Architecture, Taubman College, University of Michigan, 2019
• Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Urban Landscape Studies, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington D.C., Spring 2018
• SSRC: Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship, Social Science Research Council (SSRC), 2014
• Fulbright IIE, Research Fellowship to Russia, 2013–14
• Rackham International Research Award, University of Michigan, 2013     
• SSRC: Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (field: Ecological History), 2012

Courses Taught

Fall:     LA 6910 Design of Landscapes: Land and Water Relations in the Long Modern

            TBD  Advanced Research Seminar: Comparative Afforestation

Spring: LA 6940 Special Topics: Second World Urbanism — Landscape Infrastructures

            LA 4020-502  Senior Studio (with Martin Hogue)

Contact Information

444 Kennedy Hall Ithaca, New York 14853

mtaylor [at] cornell.edu

Ph.D in Architecture (History/Theory), University of Michigan

Master of Landscape Architecture, University of Washington (Seattle)

M.A. in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, Stanford University

A.B. in the Growth and Structure of Cities; Mathematics. Bryn Mawr College

Maria in the news

• Landscape Architecture

Home > Fellowships and Grants > Mellon Fellowships for Dissertation Research in Original Sources

Mellon Fellowships for Dissertation Research in Original Sources

Adventure, inquiry, discovery: clir mellon fellows and the archives.

NOTE: The final fellowships through this program were awarded in 2019, and CLIR is no longer accepting new applications.

With generous funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, between 2002-2019 the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) awarded over  250 fellowships to scholars  to support dissertation research in the humanities or related social sciences using original sources.

The purposes of this fellowship program were to:

• help junior scholars in the humanities and related social sciences gain skill and creativity in developing knowledge from original sources;
• enable dissertation writers to do research wherever relevant sources may be, rather than just where financial support is available;
• encourage more extensive and innovative uses of original sources in libraries, archives, museums, historical societies, and related repositories in the U.S. and abroad; and
• capture insights into how scholarly resources can be developed for access most helpfully in the future.

Former fellows share reflections on their experiences with this program in the video below:

Council on Library and Information Resources 1800 Diagonal Road, Suite 600 Alexandria, VA 22314 [email protected]

CLIR is an independent, nonprofit organization that forges strategies to enhance research, teaching, and learning environments in collaboration with libraries, cultural institutions, and communities of higher learning.

Sign up for news from CLIR.

Unless otherwise indicated, content on this site is available for re-use under CC BY-SA 4.0 License

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

•  We're Hiring!
•  Help Center

Curriculum Vitae

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• Academia.edu Publishing
•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Virtual Tour

Experience University of Idaho with a virtual tour. Explore now

• Discover a Career
• Find a Major
• Experience U of I Life

More Resources

• Admitted Students
• International Students

Take Action

• Find Financial Aid
• View Deadlines
• Find Your Rep

Helping to ensure U of I is a safe and engaging place for students to learn and be successful. Read about Title IX.

Get Involved

• Clubs & Volunteer Opportunities
• Recreation and Wellbeing
• Student Government
• Student Sustainability Cooperative
• Academic Assistance
• Safety & Security
• Career Services
• Health & Wellness Services
• Register for Classes
• Dates & Deadlines
• Financial Aid
• Sustainable Solutions
• U of I Library

• Upcoming Events

Review the events calendar.

Stay Connected

• Vandal Family Newsletter
• Here We Have Idaho Magazine
• Living on Campus
• Campus Safety
• About Moscow

The largest Vandal Family reunion of the year. Check dates.

Benefits and Services

• Vandal Voyagers Program
• Vandal License Plate
• Submit Class Notes
• Make a Gift
• View Events
• Alumni Chapters
• University Magazine
• Alumni Newsletter

U of I's web-based retention and advising tool provides an efficient way to guide and support students on their road to graduation. Login to VandalStar.

Common Tools

• Administrative Procedures Manual (APM)
• Class Schedule
• OIT Tech Support
• Academic Dates & Deadlines
• U of I Retirees Association
• Faculty Senate
• Staff Council

Department of History

Physical Address: 315 Administration Building

Mailing Address: History Department University of Idaho 875 Perimeter Drive MS 3175 Moscow, ID 83844-3175

Phone: 208-885-6253

Fax: 208-885-5221

Email: [email protected]

Web: History Department

Matthew Fox-Amato

Associate professor.

311B Administration Building

208-885-5777

[email protected]

History Department University of Idaho 875 Perimeter Drive MS 3175 Moscow, Idaho 83844-3175

View Full Profile

College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences

History Department

B.A., Harvard University, 2006 Ph.D., University of Southern California, 2013

• Hist 111: Introduction to U.S. History
• Hist 213: Race and Ethnicity Through the Ages
• Hist 290: The Historian’s Craft
• Hist 310: The Civil War and Reconstruction
• Hist 318: Colonial North America
• Hist 319: 19th-century America
• Hist 454: Pictures and Power: Photography, Politics, and American History
• Hist 495: History Senior Seminar

Matthew Fox-Amato is a cultural historian of the United States and a historian of visual and material culture. His interests include the nineteenth century, the Civil War era, the presidency, race and ethnicity, African American history, journalism, popular culture, art and visual culture, and photography. He is particularly interested in connections between the uneven development of American democracy and visual media.

His first book – Exposing Slavery: Photography, Human Bondage, and the Birth of Modern Visual Politics in America (Oxford, 2019) – explores how photography influenced and was shaped by conflicts over slavery. The book was the runner-up for the 2021 Shapiro Book Prize of The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens and a finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize as well as the Association of American Publishers PROSE Award. It has been reviewed widely, excerpted in Lapham’s Quarterly , and was named one of The Advocate ’s “Must-Read Books on Race and Hate.”

He is currently working on projects about the visual culture of the presidency and the history of iconoclasm in the Civil War era.

Selected Publications

Exposing Slavery: Photography, Human Bondage, and the Birth of Modern Visual Politics in America (Oxford University Press, 2019).

“Claiming the Past, Possessing the Park: The Forest Park Confederate Memorial and the Privatization of Public Space,” in The Material World of Modern Segregation: St. Louis in the Long Era of Ferguson , eds. Iver Bernstein and Heidi Kolk (scheduled for publication with The Common Reader in 2021).

“Portraits of Endurance: Enslaved People and Vernacular Photography in the Antebellum South,” in To Make Their Way in the World: The Enduring Legacy of the Zealy Daguerreotypes , eds. Ilisa Barbash, Molly Rogers, and Deborah Willis, Foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Aperture Foundation and Peabody Museum Press,  2020).

“Plantation Tourism,” in Paper Promises: Early American Photography, ed. Mazie Harris (Getty Publications, 2018).

“An Abolitionist Daguerreotype, 1850,” in Getting the Picture: The Visual Culture of the News, eds. Vanessa R. Schwartz and Jason Hill (Bloomsbury Press, 2015).

Awards and Honors

• National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Postdoctoral Fellowship, The Getty Research Institute, 2016-2017 (Declined)
• Digital Humanities Summer Fellowship, Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning, Univ. of Idaho, 2017
• The Zuckerman Prize in American Studies, Dissertation Award, The McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, 2014 (Recipient) 
• C. Vann Woodward Dissertation Prize, Southern Historical Association, 2014 (Runner-up)
• Mellon Research Fellowship, Massachusetts Historical Society, 2013
• Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship, 2012-2013
• Mellon Fellowship for Dissertation Research in Original Sources, Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), 2011-2012
• Jay and Deborah Last Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society, 2011
• Research Fellowship, Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South, University of Alabama, 2011 
• Mellon Research Fellowship, Virginia Historical Society, 2011
• Research Fellowship, Clements Center-DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, 2011 Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship, Social Science Research Council, 2009
• Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship, Social Science Research Council, 2009
• Curriculum Vitae pdf
• Interview with the Journal of American History

Four UW–Madison students receive Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowships

Four UW–Madison students have been awarded fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Mellon Foundation to support their innovative and creative dissertation research.

The Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowships support doctoral students in the humanities and social sciences with up to $50,000 including funds for research, training, professional development, and mentorship. The four fellows at UW–Madison are among 45 overall, selected from a pool of more than 700 applicants. They are:

• Kuhelika Ghosh , doctoral candidate in English with a minor in Culture, History, and Environment
• Fauzi Moro , doctoral student in History with a minor in African Cultural Studies
• Anika M. Rice , doctoral student in Geography with a minor in Community-Engaged Scholarship
• Vignesh Ramachandran , doctoral student in Geography

Read more about each Mellon/ACLS Fellow below.

Kuhelika Ghosh

Ghosh’s dissertation explores multispecies gardens in Anglophone Caribbean literature and culture from the 1960s to the present, bringing together postcolonial studies and ecocritical approaches.

“I am interested in the ways that Afro-diasporic women’s gardening practices in the Caribbean region often engage with nonhuman rhythms relating to seasonal time, harvest and fallow, and the lives of insects, birds, and other species,” she said.

Through this work, Ghosh demonstrates how human gardening practices and the rhythms of many different species found in gardens of various types relate to postcolonial food politics and responses to empire. Ghosh explained that the original kitchen and market gardens began during plantation slavery as provisions grounds, which were plots of land set apart from plantations for enslaved people to grow their own food.

The project uses literary texts, visual culture, little-studied archival materials, and physical gardens to create new theories about key problems in cultural study, including voice, rhythm, and spatiality. Ghosh takes an interdisciplinary approach that crosses through literary studies, environmental studies, history, and visual cultures, which gives her dissertation the boundary-pushing trait the Mellon/ACLS fellowship seeks to encourage.

“By focusing on small-scale cultivation, women’s care work, and ‘inconsequential’ multispecies creatures, my project sheds light on the many minor figures in the postcolonial Caribbean that have the power to create change in food justice movements,” Ghosh said.

She also said agricultural scholarship tends to be biased toward men’s labor, while women make up a significant portion of the agricultural labor force in the Caribbean – especially through domestic spaces like backyard gardens. She seeks to highlight Caribbean women’s perspectives and voices around the topics of food justice and postcolonial politics.

“I hope my research brings to light the importance of gardens as a feminist practice, postcolonial agricultural strategy, as well as a form of art in itself,” Ghosh said. “Gardens are often seen as ‘minor’ in the field of the environmental humanities, but my dissertation attempts to demonstrate that although a garden may be minor in terms of area, it has political, ecological, and social significances for marginalized populations in the Caribbean as well as in other postcolonial spaces around the globe.”

Fauziyatu Moro (Fauzi)

Three miles north of Accra’s central business district, the city’s largest migrant enclave, Nima, houses migrants from various African countries. Moro explained that in the nine decades of Nima’s existence, its residents have embodied a distinct Afro-cosmopolitan identity that has thus far gone unnoticed by scholars of African urban history, migration, and the African diaspora.

Moro’s dissertation and an open-access digital archive emerging from her work theorizes Nima as an internal African diaspora and an unprecedented site of pan-African consciousness. This is facilitated by migrants’ urban leisure which speaks to an ethos of global Black solidarity, Moro said.

“By centering intra-Africa migrants’ social imaginations and amusements in the making of Accra’s pan-African and transnational history, my dissertation offers a glimpse into the possibilities of researching migration and urbanization in Africa through the category of leisure as opposed to migrant labor,” Moro said. This challenges scholars to reassess assumptions about working-class intra-Africa migrants, while introducing ideas about migrants’ roles as key historical actors in creating and socially transforming African urban spaces, she added.

Moro’s project centers on migrants’ narratives, social imaginations, and visual and material culture, creating a retelling of the history of Accra. This is underscored by multi-disciplinary methods including oral sources, state and migrants’ personal archives, print media, and literary and visual analysis.

“Migrants’ oral histories and personal archives are particularly crucial to my methodology because they anchor the counter-narrative I seek to provide about Accra’s intra-Africa migrants whose lives and experiences often come to us through the skewed lens of crime, poverty and/or chaos. My research is, thus, undergirded by a quest to make visible the histories of Africa’s urban migrants as told in their own voices,” Moro said.

Anika M. Rice

“In this context, how families leverage landholdings for migration is central to livelihoods, agrarian change, debt, and situated meanings of land,” Rice said.

Land access is often left out of discussions about the root causes of migration in Central America, Rice explained. Her research provides a grounding point that takes seriously the role of land access and how land is used in the decisions that families make about migration.

Rice will collaborate with groups of predominantly Maya K’iche’ women with migrant family members who seek to understand possibilities for collective resistance against the structural and institutional impacts of migration. These groups are part of the Jesuit Migration Network‘s programming in Guatemala.

“I intend for my research to center the agency of K’iche’ women and other marginalized folks in communities of origin, and affirm the right to migrate with dignity,” she said.

Rice said that while there has been important work on transnational migration in host and transit countries, as well as on the intersections of migration and agrarian change, there is limited attention to the gendered impacts of migration in communities of origin and how migration is tied to land access. Her dissertation will use community-based research approaches to engage with the experiences of women with migrant family members, showing their strategies for survival and persistence.

Previous scholarship has often focused on the head of household and on remittances sent home from migrants. Rice’s methods will integrate household surveys with ethnographic work that engages with how multiple family members in different social positions relate to and may leverage specific parcels of land for migration.

“Elevating voices from communities of origin, with a focus on how women are organizing, is central to the co-production of knowledge on social relations, mobility and the environment,” Rice said.

Vignesh Ramachandran

Scientific management, also known as Taylorism, focuses on economic efficiency and labor productivity. Ramachandran’s research focuses on how digital Taylorism – such as automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and algorithm-based management practices – affects delivery workers. Ramachandran uses a worker’s inquiry methodology that emphasizes collaborative, action-oriented research conducted alongside workers to document the effects of digital Taylorism.

“Through this methodology, this project outlines the racializing and disciplining effects of algorithms in shaping the lives of immigrant delivery workers,” Ramachandran said. “In doing so, it also hopes to discover how digital Taylorism produces residual after-effects, like solidarity and care, that propose other modes of social life under the managerial control of algorithms and digital technology.”

Innovations in automation and AI are constantly changing the terrain of labor and work, Ramachandran said. Many of those innovations are implemented in the gig economy and push workers to work harder and faster, while corporations increase their profits, he said. His dissertation challenges “disembodied” descriptions of technological innovation by centering perspectives of immigrant delivery workers.

“Many working class immigrants in New York City have been doubly subjected to the effects of imperialism—faced with austerity, militarism, and climate crisis in their home countries, and border violence, policing, and structural poverty in the U.S.,” Ramachandran said. “In this context, my research challenges race-neutral accounts of the gig economy by situating exploitation in the gig economy within the long [duration] of racial capitalism and imperialism, and by documenting stories of immigrant worker resistance amidst this violence.”

Ramachandran said his approach to dissertation research “re-introduces the workers’ inquiry as an innovative form of collaborative research that academics can undertake with workers.”

“Whereas companies like Uber, Grubhub, and Doordash spend millions on research and development to maximize profit in the gig economy, the workers’ inquiry turns to the experiences and situated knowledge of workers to document and contest exploitation in their workplace,” he explained. “In this case, this project builds on over two years of community-engaged research with undocumented South Asian delivery workers and community organizations to understand how resistance to exploitation in the gig economy takes place at the intersection of digital technology, labor, and everyday immigrant life. Moreover, the project develops the importance of collaborative, community engaged methodologies in the broader humanities and social sciences.”

• Facebook Logo
• Twitter Logo
• Linkedin Logo

Alexey Kushnir Profile page

• Associate Professor Of Economics Tepper School of Business
• 412-268-6079
• [email protected]
• Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business, 5000 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, United States
• Personal Website
• Tepper School of Business

My primary research interest lies in the domain of Microeconomics and, specifically, the fields of Mechanism Design, Optimal Taxation, and Market Design. In mechanism design, my work focuses on robust mechanisms, i.e., mechanisms that are not sensitive to the fine details of the environment. In particular, shows that in standard social choice environments with private types Bayesian incentive compatibility (BIC) is equivalent to dominant strategy incentive compatibility (DIC). Subsequent papers extend this result to environments with correlated types and non-linear utilities. In conjunction with the BIC-DIC equivalence, analyzes also a purely mathematical question when a transformation of closed sets coincides with the intersection of their images. My research also studies incentive compatibility constraints—the crucial constraints in mechanism design that ensure that agents communicate their privately held information truthfully. Paper simplifies incentive compatibility constraints in often complex multi-dimensional environments. My another paper develops a novel geometric approach to mechanism design that exploits classical results from convex analysis and majorization theory to provide a tractable analysis of generally complex resource and incentive constraints. A subsequent paper extends the geometric approach to environments with interdependent values. My research in optimal taxation studies income taxation policy in the presence of non-competitive markets. It develops a theoretical analysis of the optimal income tax schedule in the presence of endogenous prices and takes it to the data. My work in the area of market design focuses on the analysis of signaling mechanisms in some labor markets and online dating platforms. This endeavor shows that the introduction of private signals facilitates match formation for a wide range of environments. Nevertheless, there are instances when signaling precludes match formation.

ACADEMIC POSITIONS

• Assistant Professor Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business, Pittsburgh, United States 2014
• Senior Research Associate University of Zurich, ESEI Center for Market Design, Zurich, Switzerland 2010 - 2014

NON-ACADEMIC POSITIONS

• Economist Center of Economic and Financial Research, Russian Federation 1 May 2007 - 31 Aug 2007
• PhD in Economics Pennsylvania State University, State College, United States 2006 - 2010
• Master of Science in Physics and Mathematics (with Honors) Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Dolgoprudnyy, Russia 2004 - 2006
• Master of Arts in Economics (Cum Laude) New Economic School, Moscow, Russia 2004 - 2006
• Bachelor of Science in Physics and Mathematics (with Honors) Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Dolgoprudnyy, Russia 2000 - 2004
• Russian Can read, write, speak, understand and peer review
• English Can read, write, speak and understand

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

• 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth
• Economic Theory
• Applied Economics
• Econometrics

Stanford Humanities Today

Arcade: a digital salon.

Workshop with Professor Ariel Evan Mayse

Please join the Blokker Research Workshop: Religion, Politics, and Culture for a hybrid event with Dr. Ariel Evan Mayse, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford. We will be workshopping a paper draft by Dr. Mayse titled "Rights, Obligations, and Myths: Thinking with Jewish Environmental Law and Ethics," which will be shared with those who RSVP.

Stanford Humanities Center 424 Santa Teresa Street

Also online via Zoom

Related Events

Darren dochuk | anointed with oil.

Rushain Abbasi | The Opening of Mecca and the Closure of Violence

'Esiteli Hafoka | Angafakafonua as Tongan Religio-Racial Identity

Religion, Politics, and Culture

Discovering Humanities Research at Stanford

Stanford Humanities Center

Advancing Research in the Humanities

Humanities Research for a Digital Future

The Humanities in the World

• Annual Reports
• Humanitrees
• Humanities Center Fellows
• Advisory Council
• Director's Alumni Cabinet
• Honorary Fellows
• Hume Honors Fellows
• International Visitors
• Workshop Coordinators
• Why Humanities Matter
• Fellowships for External Faculty
• Fellowships for Stanford Faculty
• Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in the Humanities
• Dissertation Fellowships FAQs
• Career Launch Fellowships
• Fellowships for Stanford Undergraduates
• International Visitors Program
• FAQ Mellon Fellowship
• Faculty Fellowships FAQ
• Events Archive
• Public Lectures
• Checklist for Event Coordinators
• Facilities Guidelines
• co-sponsorship from the Stanford Humanities Center
• Call for Proposals
• Manuscript Workshops
• Past Workshops
• Research Workshops

Fenderson wins Mellon New Directions Fellowship

Jonathan Fenderson , an associate professor of African and African American studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has won a 2024 New Directions Fellowship from the Mellon Foundation.

Established in 2002, New Directions Fellowships support faculty in the humanities and humanistic social sciences in acquiring new skills outside their areas of expertise. Awardees receive the equivalent of one year’s academic salary, as well as two summers of additional support and tuition, course fees or equivalent costs associated with new training programs.

Fenderson, who studies African diaspora social movements, is one of 10 New Directions recipients for 2024. The fellowship will support training in ethnomusicology and sound studies relating to his current research, tentatively titled “Project Noise: NYC Public Housing, Neoliberalism and the Ascent of Hip-Hop America.” Drawing on historical archives, periodicals, visual media, interviews and a vast catalog of albums, songs and sonic production, “Project Noise” will explore hip-hop’s roots in immediate local experiences, particularly the built environment, and its implication for our understanding of race, class, governance and urban life.

Fenderson is only the fourth WashU faculty member to win a New Directions Fellowship, following Nancy Reynolds, an associate professor of history in Arts & Sciences, in 2014; and Rebecca Messbarger, a professor of Italian in Arts & Sciences, and Mark Pegg, a professor of history, both in 2005. The Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences coordinated WashU’s internal nomination process and then helped Fenderson develop and submit his final proposal. For more information about the fellowships, visit mellon.org .

Comments and respectful dialogue are encouraged, but content will be moderated. Please, no personal attacks, obscenity or profanity, selling of commercial products, or endorsements of political candidates or positions. We reserve the right to remove any inappropriate comments. We also cannot address individual medical concerns or provide medical advice in this forum.

You Might Also Like

Latest from the Record

Announcements.

Peace Park planting May 18

Policy changes planned for Commencement

Public university directory to remain

Biology students win annual awards

Ursaworks Robotics Club succeeds at competition

School of Law honors six alumni

Eduardo Slatopolsky, professor emeritus of medicine, 89

Philip Needleman, emeritus trustee, longtime benefactor, 85

Amarnath Ghosh, student in Arts & Sciences, 34

Research Wire

Barcodes expand range of high-resolution sensor

Some brain tumors may be linked to head injury, mouse study suggests 

Group-based interventions address HIV stigma

The View From Here

Washington people.

Caitlyn Collins

Kim Thuy Seelinger

Antonio Douthit-Boyd

Who Knew WashU?

Who Knew WashU? 1.27.21

Who Knew WashU? 1.13.21

Who Knew WashU? 12.9.20

International Dissertation Field Research Fellowships

to support a program of international predoctoral research fellowships and associated training workshops in the humanities and social sciences, for use in collaboration with the American Council of Learned Societies

Higher Learning Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Program and Predoctoral Program See the grant

Higher Learning Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowships See the grant

Higher Learning Research Completion Support: Whither Global? See the grant

Higher Learning International Dissertation Research Fellowships See the grant

Higher Learning Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives and Predoctoral Research Grants See the grant

View all related grants