Four faculty receive MIT SHASS Research Fund awards for 2023

The annual MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) Research Fund supports research in the Institute’s humanities, arts, and social science fields that shows promise of making an important contribution to the proposed area of activity. The four recipients for 2023 are:

Volha Charnysh, assistant professor of political science, plans to apply her funding to participate in a program from the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity. The 12-week curriculum is designed to develop and improve faculty research practices and to help achieve publication goals.

Ken Urban, senior lecturer in music and theater arts, will use the funding to support the development of his new multimedia play “The Moderate” with director and designer Jared Mezzocchi. The play explores questions around content moderation and online violence, which Urban spent a year researching for the project.

Eden Medina, associate professor in the Program of Science, Technology, and Society, will apply her funding toward a book project, “How to Design a Revolution: The Chilean Road to Design,” which examines the role of graphic and industrial design during the government of Chilean president Salvador Allende (1970-73). The book’s publication will coincide with an associated exhibition at the Centro Cultural La Moneda in Santiago, Chile and with the 50th anniversary of the military coup that brought an abrupt end to Chilean democracy.

The SHASS research fund will enable Marjoleine Kars, adjunct professor of history, to make a research trip to Suriname this spring, continuing work on her ongoing book project. The book, “Multiple Crossings: The Lives of Two African Men in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Atlantic,” is a biography of two itinerant African men who were caught up in Dutch slavery and colonialism during the Age of the Revolution (1760-c.1820).