Levitan Prize
MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
 


 
 


 

An Annual Research Fund

The $30,000 Levitan Prize was inaugurated in 1990 and is awarded annually as a research fund to support innovative and creative scholarship in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. All regular tenure track SHASS faculty are eligible to apply.

Established through a gift from the late James A. Levitan, a 1945 MIT graduate in chemistry who was also a member of the MIT Corporation.

How to Apply 

Please download the proposal cover form here.

Costs of travel, research assistance, computers, and summer salary are appropriate for inclusion in the budget. Proposals should be no more than 10 double-spaced pages, and should contain a description of the research and its significance as well as a budget indicating how the funds will be spent. Proposals should be submitted to your Administrative Officer.

Inquiries should be directed to levitanprize@mit.edu.

Congratulations to the 2024 recipient: Bettina Stoetzer, Associate Professor of Anthropology:

Unsettling Refuge: Disrupted Mobilities in Multispecies Worlds

Stoetzer’s proposal promises to broaden and deepen the fieldwork underpinning her exciting second book project on multispecies worldmaking. It documents and analyzes how multiple species—from human actors, such as ecologists and planners, to nonhuman actors, such as wild boar, migratory birds, and orca whales—are adapting to climate change and seeking to bring about ecological wellbeing. The work is poised to broaden a growing field responding to challenges of the Anthropocene, the term ported from the sciences to describe human-induced planetary change humanists have shown had key social foundations, particularly in longstanding divisions between human and nonhuman, culture and “nature.” Stoetzer’s multi-sited, transnational ethnography is poised to showcase strategies for co-designing ecosystems at a moment of intensifying change, not only rising temperatures, but in altered biogeochemical cycles that have long structured habitats, migration corridors, and relations between species. 


Recipients of the Levitan Prize 


 

Bettina Stoetzer
Website

 

2024 Anthropology

Benjamin Mangrum
Website
Award Feature Story

 

2023 Literature

Athulya Aravind
Website
Award Feature Story

 

2022 Linguistics

In Song Kim
Website
Award Feature Story

 

2021 Political Science

Amy Moran-Thomas
Website
Award Feature Story

 

2020 Anthropology

Dwaipayan Banerjee
Website
Award Feature Story
 

2019 Program in Science, Technology, and Society

Robin Scheffler
Website
Award Feature Story
 

2018 Program in Science, Technology, and Society

Vivek Bald
Website
Award Feature Story
 

2017 CMS/W

Thomas Levenson
Website
Award Feature Story
 

2016

CMS/W

Lily Tsai
Website
Award Feature Story

2015

Political Science

Manduhai Buyandelger
Award Feature Story
 

2014  

Anthropology

Shankar Raman
Award Feature Story
 

2013  

Literature

Erica James
Award Feature Story
 

2012

Anthropology

Adam Berinsky
Award Feature Story
 

2011

Political Science

Mary Fuller
Award Feature Story
 

2010  

Literature

Heather Paxson
Award Feature Story
 

2008

Anthropology

Meg Jacobs

2007

History

Stefan Helmreich

2006

Anthropology

Emma Teng

2005

Foreign Languages and Literatures

Peter Child

2004

Music and Theater Arts

Joseph Dumit

2003

Science, Technology, and Society

Diana Henderson

2002

Literature

David Kaiser

2001

Science, Technology, and Society

James Buzard

2000

Literature

Anne McCants

1999

History

Michel deGraff

1998

Linguistics & Philosophy

Bernd Widdig

1997

Foreign Languages and Literatures

Elizabeth A. Wood

1996

History

Ed Turk

1995

Foreign Languages and Literatures

Hugh Gusterson

1994

Science, Technology, and Society

Elizabeth Garrels

1993

Foreign Languages and Literatures

Peter Perdue

1992

History

Barry Posen

1991

Political Science

Joshua Cohen

1990

Linguistics and Philosophy

 

Looking for the Levitan Awards for Excellence in Teaching? Click here.