Anushka Chakrabarti | January 19, 2023
Among the 204 projects nationwide funded by $28.1 million in grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities this year are initiatives by UCLA faculty members Meredith Cohen, Willeke Wendrich, Li Min and Ellen Pearlstein.
Cohen, an associate professor of art history, received an NEH-Mellon Fellowship for Digital Publication, which includes an outright grant of $60,000 to work on “The Lady Chapel as a Model for Visualizations of Digital 3-D Historical Reconstructions.” The project will involve researching, writing and using data visualization to create a website to explore 3-D architectural reconstructions of the Lady Chapel of Saint-German-des-Prés.
Wendrich, the Joan Silsbee Chair of African Cultural Archaeology and director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, and Min, an associate professor of anthropology, received a Humanities Initiatives at Colleges and Universities grant as co-directors for “Creating an Interdepartmental Certificate in Cultural Heritage Research, Stewardship and Restitution.” They received an outright grant of $124,688 for the “one-year project to design and implement a graduate certificate program in cultural heritage studies.”
Pearlstein, a professor in the School of Education & Information Studies and the UCLA/Getty Conservation Program, received a Research and Development grant for “Embedding Sustainability in Cultural Heritage Conservation Education.” She received an outright grant of $349,826 to be used to “research and compile data on methods for integrating sustainability into conservation programs as part of a multi-year project to build theoretical frameworks into pedagogical models.”
“The range, diversity and creativity of these new projects speak to the wealth of humanities ideas and deep engagement of humanities practitioners across our country,” said NEH Chair Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo) in a statement. “From Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Hilo, Hawai‘i, NEH funding reaches thousands of towns and communities, supporting local organizations, fostering creative projects and providing access to high-quality humanities for all Americans.”