Fellowships

Summer Graduate Urban Public Humanities Fellowship 

The NYU Cities Collaborative and the GSAS Public Humanities Initiative, with support from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, have launched the Summer Urban Public Humanities Fellowship for graduate students interested in exploring multi-disciplinary aspects of urban life and experience.

Humanities masters and Ph.D. students at NYU are eligible to apply. Fellows will conduct paid summer internships with a range of museums, cultural institutions, and other non-profits with an urban mission. Through these internships, students will have the opportunity to put their research and critical thinking skills to work on projects that involve humanistic inquiry, while also gaining invaluable work experience. Fellows will work twenty hours per week at one of our partner sites. Fellows will receive a $5,000 stipend. Below is a list of past fellows and their hosts.

Summer 2022 Urban Public Humanities Fellows and Host Institutions

• AASLH: American Association for State and Local History
  Katie Heiserman (M.A. candidate, Archives and Public History)
• Black Gotham Experience
• Waqia Kareem (Ph.D. candidate, American Studies)
  Gabriela D’Addario (M.A. candidate, Experimental Humanities)
• Center for the Study of American Exile and Expatriation
  Sol Cabrini de la Ciudad (Ph.D. candidate, Performance Studies)
• Modern Language Association
  Aviv Hilbig-Bokaer (Ph.D. candidate, German)

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Summer 2021 Urban Public Humanities Fellows and Host Institutions

• AASLH: American Association for State and Local History
  Ali Aoun (M.A. candidate, Social and Cultural Analysis)
  Gavin Beinart-Smollan (Ph.D. candidate, Hebrew and Judaic Studies)
• Black Gotham Experience
  Katrina Martinez (M.A. candidate, Experimental Humanities)
• The Center for Ballet and the Arts
  Chloe Courtney (Ph.D. candidate, The Institute of Fine Arts)
• Civil Rights Foundation/The Museum of Civil Rights
  Anisa Jackson (Ph.D. candidate, American Studies)
  Emma Maniere (Ph.D. candidate, History)
• Museum of Chinese in America
  Joseph Bishop (M.A. candidate, History)
  William Cheung (Ph.D. candidate, German)

Undergraduate Urban Humanities Research Fellowship (UUHRF)

The Cities Collaborative UUHRF, with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, facilitates faculty-mentored undergraduate urban humanities research. The program is open to students from any undergraduate department or program and faculty sponsors from all schools at NYU, including NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai. We define humanities broadly to include topics and/or methods in humanities disciplines or the humanistic social sciences, including but not restricted to Africana Studies, American Studies, Anthropology, Asian and Pacific American Studies, Area Studies, Art History, Classics, Education, English, Environmental Studies, Film, Fine Arts, Gallatin Individualized Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, History, Global Public Health, Languages, Latinx Studies, Literature, Law, Media, Culture, and Communications, Metropolitan Studies, Performance Studies, Politics, Prison Education Program, Religious Studies, Social and Cultural Analysis, Sociology, Sustainable Urban Environments, and Urban Design and Architectural Studies. Grant funds will be provided to support new and/or existing research efforts. The most recent applications closed in April 2023. For a description of the last grant cycle, see: UUHRF spring 2022

Spring 2022 UUHRF Winners

Zachary Gillespie (American Studies)
Project: Examining the roles of fitness and entrepreneurship in the lives of individuals both during and post-incarceration
Advisor: Thuy Linh Tu

Neciferia Hernandez (Gallatin School of Individualized Study)
Project: Black Home as a Site of Reparations
Advisor: Arlene Davila

Rebecca Levy (Sustainable Urban Environments, Tandon School of Engineering)
Project: A digitized interactive platform which explores the history of mutual aid and the emergence of community fridges
Advisor: Alice Reznickova

Campbell Munn (Gallatin)
Project: Solutions in the Shadow of the Parthenon: Outer Borough Housing Solutions as Inspired by 20th Century Greek Land Exchange Programs
Advisor: Jon Ritter

Mychal Pagan (Gallatin)
Project: A 3-part documentary short series on reentrance of recently incarcerated individuals.
Advisor: Thuy Linh Tu

Natasha Roy (English and American Literature; Politics)
Project: “New York’s Ulysses,” a documentary short disseminating urban theories.
Advisor: John P. Waters

Fall 2021 UUHRF Winners

Suhail Gharaibeh (History)
Project: Urban Colonialism and the Making of Modern Cosmopolises: Paris and Algiers under the Second French Empire (1851-1870)
Advisor: Stephanos Geroulanos

Hanyun Liu (Sociology)
Project: Chinese Homelessness in New York
Advisor: Siwei Cheng

Megan Schwartz (SCA and Politics)
Project: Eviction and the COVID-19 Pandemic in New York
Advisor: Sophie Gonick

Kade Van Meeteren (Sustainable Urban Environments)
Interstate 235: Widening the Highway Justice Conversation in Des Moines
Advisor: Manny Patole

Spring 2021 UUHRF Winners

Chris-Ann Barnett (CAS Politics and Sociology)
Project: The 13th Amendment and Prison Labor
Advisor: Kimberley Johnson

Niccolo Acram Cappaletto (NYUAD: Art and Art History)
Project: Al Ain and Delma Island, Abu Dhabi World Heritage Site research
Advisor Professor Alia Yunis

Maxwel Guy (Gallatin)
Project: Community Greenhouses, Community Fridges, and Food Culture in Communities of Color in New York City
Advisor: Gianpaolo Baiocchi.

Zoe Liu (NYU Shanghai–Humanities)
Project: Oral history of migrant children’s education in Shanghai
Advisor: Leksa Lee

Michael Pagan (Gallatin)
Project: Documentary film on the costs of imprisonment on communities of color in New York City
Advisor: Thuy Linh Tu

Eleni Retta (CAS–Public Policy)
Project: Documentary film on the fight for 15 minimum wage campaign in New York City
Advisor: Deborah Archer

Ervin Smajic (NYUAD–Political Science and Legal Studies)
Project: Environmental Policy and Law and its impact on Balkan cities
Advisor: Rafael Leal-Arcas

Fall 2020 UUHRF Winners

Adrianna Espinal (Latinx Studies and Politics/ minor: Mandarin)
Project: Dominican Forced Migrants in Madrid, Spain
Advisor: Maria Josefina Saldaña-Portillo

Cam Franklin (Social and Cultural Analysis/Recorded Music)
Project: The Policing of Marginalized Communities in New York City through Nightlife
Advisor: Michael Ralph

Zach Gillespie (American Studies/Prison Education Program)
Project: Surviving Austerity in the Contemporary American Prison
Advisor: Tommaso Bardelli

Gabriela Gutierrez Cadavid (Sustainable Urban Environments)
Project: The Lives of Sanitation Workers in Monterrey, Mexico
Advisor: Manohar Ramkumar Patole

Devanshi Khetarpal (Comparative Literature/ minor: Creative Writing)
Project: Women and Metaphors of Violent Cityscapes
Advisor: Rebecca Falkoff

Derick McCarthy (Social and Cultural Analysis/Prison Education Program)
Project: An Oral History of the COVID-19 Pandemic in New York State Prisons
Advisor: Thuy Linh Tu

Rohan Laila (Metropolitan Studies and Sociology)
Project: Iron, Glass, and Revolution: Municipalism in the 21st Century
Advisor: Tyson Patros

Amaan Stewart (Environmental Studies/ minors in Film Production and SCA)
Project: At Night We Hunt: A Documentary on New York City’s Night Fishing Community 
Advisor: Alice Eliot

Mahmood Sumaita (Global Public Health and Chemistry/ minors in History and Genetics)
Project: Public Health in New York, 1918 and 2020
Advisor: David Oshinsky

Vincent Thompson (American Studies/Prison Education Program)
Project: An Oral History of the Covid-19 Pandemic in New York State Prisons
Advisor: Thuy Linh Tu

Shaoyu Zhang (Humanities/ minor Middle Eastern Culture and Society)
Project: Muslim Merchants in Quanzhou/Zaitun, 13th and 14th Centuries
Advisor: Tamsen Sen