2024 Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders

SUPPORT FOR OUTSTANDING EARLY-CAREER PROFESSORS RESHAPING ACADEMIC COMMUNITIES

The Institute for Citizens & Scholars has named 10 scholars as Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders (MEFL) for 2024. Funded by the Mellon Foundation, the MEFL Awards support junior faculty whose research focuses on contemporary American history, politics, culture, and society, and who are committed to the creation of an inclusive campus community for underrepresented students and scholars.

The MEFL Award seeks to free the time of junior faculty working toward tenure—including those from underrepresented groups and others committed to eradicating disparities in their fields—so that they can both engage in and build support for systems, networks, and affinity groups that make their fields and campuses more inclusive. Each recipient receives a 12-month stipend of $20,000 while working toward tenure.

The exceptional early-career professors in this year’s class work in fields such as women’s and gender studies, history, and performing arts and film. Awardees’ scholarship focuses on critical issues such as religion, immigration, public policy, and race. In addition to pioneering research, they also take on additional campus responsibilities like mentoring, serving on advisory councils, working with underrepresented students, and giving additional talks and lectures. (See the full list of Fellows below.)

The 2024 class comes from a diverse and competitive applicant pool. The final MEFL awardees were selected through an interview process by a selection committee of four former and current university leaders with various academic and research backgrounds.

Established in 2015, the program has now supported more than 80 junior faculty who represent the next generation of leaders and scholars in the humanities and social sciences and who are poised to play a significant role in shaping American higher education. Through their own work to make their fields and institutions more inclusive, they are expanding young people’s understandings and frameworks for active roles in civil society.

For more information about the MEFL Award, eligibility requirements, and the next application cycle, visit https://citizensandscholars.org/fellowships/mefl/

2024 Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders

David Guillermo Barba, Emory University | Film & Media
Regreso/Return

Nneka D. Dennie, Washington and Lee University | History
Redefining Radicalism: The Rise of Black Feminism and the Politics of Respectability in the Nineteenth Century

Yuri Doolan, Brandeis University | History/Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
The First Amerasians: Mixed Race Koreans from Camptowns to America

Nancy A. Khalil, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor | American Culture
Limited Imams

Jasmine Mahmoud, University of Washington | School of Drama
Avant-Garde Geographies: Race, Public Policy, and Experimentation in the Urban Frontier

Kimberly Monroe, Trinity Washington University | Global Affairs/History
The Black Underground: Assata Shakur and Global Freedom Struggles

Danny Pimentel, University of Oregon | School of Journalism and Communication
Spatial Computing for Social Change

Catherine Provenzano, University of California, Los Angeles | Musicology
Emotional Signals: Auto-Tune, Melodyne, and the Cultural Politics of Pitch Correction

Juliana Restrepo Sanín, University of Florida | Political Science
Gender, Violence, and Democracy in Latin America

Rae Shaw, San Francisco State University | School of Cinema
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