SHASS announces six Research Fund recipients for 2021
 


 

The SHASS Research Fund supports MIT research in the humanities, arts, or social sciences that shows promise of making an important contribution to the proposed area of activity.
 



Congratulations to the 2021 Recipients


Charlotte Brathwaite | Associate Professor, Music and Theater Arts
SHASS research funding will enable Brathwaite's continuing work on the feature length film and installation Forgotten Paradise: Grazettes Sun. She plans to assemble a small team of collaborators in Senegal and to interview local scholars, researchers, and those knowledgeable about the healing wisdom of African traditional technologies and rituals. 
Charlotte Brathwaite's website


Heather Hendershot | Professor of Film and Media, CMS/W
Hendershot will apply her funding award to the completion of her new book Breaking the News, which will be released by University of Chicago Press. The book will examine the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention and notions of reporting as a "public service" in the netwrok era, a time when Americans all watched the same three channels. 
Heather Hendershot's website


Andreas Karatsolis | Associate Director of Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication
The program in Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication (WRAP) has been at the heart of supporting the Communications Requirement for the past twenty years. The SHASS research funding will support WRAP's cognitive and social perspective study of the instruction students currently recieve in AP and IB classrooms, in order to explore transfer of literacy practices across fields or disciplines.
Andreas Karatsolis's website


Clapperton Mavhunga | Assosicate Professor, Program in Science, Technology, and Society
This funding will support the research for and creation of a website for the Global South Cosmologies and Epistemologies Initiative, a project that aims to create trans-hemispheric conversations and capture the felt experience of people within the "Global South" as well as the various ways of thinking about and ordering their world toward a global future.
Clapperton Mavhunga's website


Tobias Salz | Professor of Economics
Salz plans to examine the role of AI in relation to highly skilled jobs that rely on complex reasoning, such as X-rays and CT-scans. The project encompasses both computer science literature and econometric methods and will work with radiologists and treatment physicians to measure the compatibility of human and AI input.
Tobias Salz's website


Ken Urban | Senior Lecturer, Music and Theater Arts
Urban will use the SHASS research funding to create a new audio play called Vapor Trail. A collaboration among MIT, the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, and the Atlantic Theater Company in New York City, the play will explore how grief can bring strangers together.
Ken Urban's website

 


Top Row, L to R: Charlotte Brathwaite, Theater Arts; Heather Hendershot, Comparative Media Studies; Andreas Karatsolis, Writing Program; Second Row, L to R: Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, Science, Technology, and Society; Tobias Salz, Economics; Ken Urban, Theater Arts

 

 

Suggested Links

MIT's Mission in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences 

About the SHASS Research Fund

The Power of the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at MIT

 

MIT SHASS Research and Innovation 
Meeting the world's greatest challenges 

MIT SHASS is home to research that has a global impact, and to graduate programs recognized as among the finest in the world. With 13 academic fields, the School's research portfolio includies international studies, linguistics, economics, poverty alleviation, history, literature, anthropology, digital humanities, philosophy, global languages, music and theater arts, writing, political science, security studies, women's and gender studies, and comparative media studies.
Research Portfolio