The MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as a “Genius Grant,” is an $800,000 no-strings-attached prize awarded to 20-30 extraordinarily talented and creative individuals each year. The 2024 class of MacArthur Fellows consists of 22 accomplished individuals, including ten faculty members from AAU institutions. A total of 12 academics were honored with the fellowship this year.
The MacArthur Fellowship program seeks to “foster and enable innovative, imaginative, and groundbreaking ideas, thinking, and strategies” by investing directly in fellows’ “originality, insight, and potential.” Recipients tend to be individuals with a “track record of excellence in a field of scholarship or area of practice” and who have demonstrated “the ability to impact society in significant and beneficial ways through their pioneering work or the rigor of their contributions.”
Faculty at AAU institutions honored with the fellowship include:
- Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American studies at Princeton University, for “illuminating how technology reflects and reproduces inequality and championing the role of imagination in social transformation.”
- Jericho Brown, poet and director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University, for “reflecting on contemporary culture and identity in works that combine formal experimentation and intense self-examination.”
- Tony Cokes, professor of modern culture and media at Brown University, for “creating video works that recontextualize historical and cultural moments.”
- Nicola Dell, associate professor of information science at Cornell Tech (established jointly by Cornell University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology), for “developing technology interventions to address the needs of overlooked populations, such as survivors of intimate partner violence.”
- Juan Felipe Herrera, emeritus professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, for "uplifting Chicanx culture and amplifying shared experiences of solidarity and empowerment."
- Jennifer L. Morgan, professor of social and cultural analysis and history at New York University, for “deepening understanding of how the exploitation of enslaved women enabled the institutionalization of race-based slavery in early America and the Black Atlantic.”
- Martha Muñoz, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University, for “investigating the motors and brakes of evolution.”
- Joseph Parker, assistant professor of biology and biological engineering at California Institute of Technology, for “uncovering the origins of symbiosis in rove beetles and the evolution of complex organismal traits.”
- Dorothy Roberts, professor of law and sociology, professor of civil rights, and professor of Africana studies at University of Pennsylvania, for “exposing racial inequities embedded in social service systems and uplifting the experiences of people caught up in them.”
- Keivan G. Stassun, professor of physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University, for “Expanding opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and careers for underrepresented populations.”
A complete list of this year’s awardees is available here. Congratulations to the winners!
Kritika Agarwal is senior editorial officer at AAU.