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Gifts/Grants

UCLA-led project receives $1.3 million NSF grant to connect creativity and innovation

UCLA researchers from the humanities, arts and engineering aim to foster stronger ties between America’s vibrant creative sector and those involved in pioneering scientific research, technology innovation and workforce evolution. Funded by a $1.3 million award from the National Science Foundation, the yearlong project will include a series of activities exploring how to connect regional strengths in culture and technology, foster U.S. competitiveness in industries involved in the creative sector and strengthen workforce development at the nexus of creativity and technology in critical and emerging areas of innovation, such as artificial intelligence. UCLA has launched a project office supported by the NSF’s new…

$2 million gift to create endowed chair in the study of religion

With a gift of $2 million from an anonymous donor, UCLA plans to establish the Robert E. Archer Chair in the Study of Religion, the first endowed chair of its kind for the campus. Pending the approval of the UCLA Academic Senate, the permanent appointment chair will support a distinguished faculty member in UCLA’s interdepartmental degree program in the study of religion, founded a half-century ago within the Division of Humanities. “We are profoundly grateful to our anonymous donor for this generous and forward-thinking gift, which will advance the growth and continued impact of a vital UCLA program,” said Alexandra…

$11 million gift establishes Yarshater Center for the Study of Iranian Literary Traditions

UCLA has received a commitment of $11 million from the Persian Heritage Foundation to establish the UCLA Yarshater Center for the Study of Iranian Literary Traditions, a research hub that aims to advance knowledge of ancient Iranian literature and culture worldwide. The center was named for the late Ehsan Yarshater, the inaugural Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies at Columbia University, whose lifework has had a profound impact on the study of the Iranian world globally. Among the many original projects Yarshater initiated are the “Bibliotheca Persica,” a collection of pioneering publications foregrounding Iranian literary traditions; “A History of Persian…

Gift from Robert Lemelson Foundation will advance Amazigh studies at UCLA

The UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures received a gift of $345,000 from the Robert Lemelson Foundation to establish the Amazigh Studies Program Fund at UCLA, which will advance the global study of the language, history and culture of one of North Africa’s oldest indigenous populations. The project will be led by Aomar Boum, professor of anthropology and of Near Eastern languages and cultures at UCLA, and Brahim El Guabli, chair and associate professor of Arabic studies at Williams College. The scholars, both of whom hail originally from Morocco and are of Amazigh descent, seek to lay the…

Art is their adventure: Graduate students will benefit from Peter and Sheri Weller’s beautiful vision

When he was working on his master’s degree at the highly selective program at Syracuse University’s campus in Florence, Italy, Peter Weller experienced firsthand the challenges of graduate work in art history: hours of archival research, hours in front of the art itself, fluency in multiple languages and, of course, the expenses of travel, school and life. “It was extraordinarily arduous, and I wanted to quit after a month,” he said with a laugh. An Oscar-nominated filmmaker and acclaimed actor of stage and screen, Peter persevered and even went on to earn his doctorate in art history from UCLA in 2014. However,…

Zrinka Stahuljak and Shannon Speed receive Mellon grant

Professors Zrinka Stahuljak and Shannon Speed received a $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to support a project called Race in the Global Past through Native Lenses. Its goals include elevating Native American, Pacific Islander and other Indigenous scholarship on historical articulations of “race” and “Indigeneity” across the globe, and supporting efforts to recruit and retain Indigenous faculty at UCLA. In addition to creating a pipeline to study history more inclusively through these and other perspectives, the project will bring together community scholars-in-residence and deliver programming and outreach efforts led by Stahuljak, Speed and the respective interdisciplinary research centers they direct:…