intro
Professors Serouj Aprahamian (Dance) and Ryan Griffis (School of Art & Design) were each awarded a Humanities Research Institute 2025-26 Faculty Fellowship, and Kirsten Barker, a PhD student in the School of Music, was awarded a graduate student fellowship.
The theme for the year is “Story and Place,” which invites scholars and artists to explore the intersection of place and storytelling in their work, considering how narratives shape and are shaped by locations, histories, cultures, and politics. Proposals for the 2025–26 fellowships were evaluated on scholarly excellence, research readiness, and alignment with the interdisciplinary theme.
The selected projects from FAA are:
- Serouj Aprahamian: “ ‘Showtime!’: Dancing in the New York City UnderGround”
- Ryan Griffis: “When the Landscape Recognizable Today Was Shaped”
- Kirsten Barker: “Max of the Antarctic: Stories of ‘Wilderness’ in Music and Word”
Faculty fellows are provided with one semester of release time and research funds. Graduate student fellows are given a stipend and a tuition and partial fee waiver for the academic year of the award. All fellows are expected to maintain residence on the Illinois campus during the award year, and to participate in HRI activities, including the yearlong Fellows Seminar.