The Syracuse University Humanities Center (HC) advances humanities scholarship and showcases the humanities as a public good, building community around diverse forms of research and engagement, including collaborative engagement with crucial contemporary challenges. The Engaged Humanities Network (EHN) brings together scholars, teachers, students, artists and community leaders to foster publicly engaged research, teaching and creative projects that build more interconnected and just communities.

From supporting undergraduates taking their first community-based EHN courses to doctoral candidates and postdoctoral researchers, the EHN, in partnership with the HC, provides vital infrastructure for community-engaged work across different academic trajectories. The EHN highlights the public value of humanities research by fostering collaboration, supporting a wide range of scholarship, and promoting community engagement, helping scholars develop lasting community relationships while advancing their academic work.

To that end, the HC, thanks to support from the Office of Research and the College of Arts and Sciences, recently established the Engaged Humanities Postdoctoral Fellows program as part of a biennial initiative in collaboration with EHN. This prestigious, highly competitive program appoints researchers with doctoral degrees to two-year faculty-level positions in residence at the Humanities Center. The fellows advance rigorous scholarship while fostering public engagement with humanities research and teaching. As early-career scholars, the inaugural postdoctoral fellows, Lauren Cooper and Miryam Nacimento, are both also developing and teaching creative new courses that help undergraduates explore new possibilities of community engagement through poetry and storytelling. Their work bridges academic and public spheres forging reciprocal connections that respond to community needs.

Brice Nordquist, EHN director, Dean’s Professor of Community Engagement, and associate professor of writing and rhetoric, notes, “These fellowships provide opportunities for early-career, publicly engaged scholars to develop their work through the vast multidisciplinary and cross-community network of the EHN and HC, and they enhance our growing lineup of course offerings, programs and research and creative projects with the expertise and energy of cutting-edge researchers and teachers.”

Vivian May, director of the Humanities Center and CNY Humanities Corridor, and professor of women’s and gender studies, states: “I am truly delighted that the Humanities Center, in partnership with the EHN, has the privilege to offer this new fellowship initiative, one that deepens humanities research impact and advances publicly engaged scholarship, teaching and community-based projects. The postdoctoral fellows are already making such a positive contribution to our local community, on and off campus, by offering research methods workshops, designing and teaching cutting-edge courses steeped in experiential learning and reciprocal community engagement, and of course, through their own original research and book projects.”

• Lauren Cooper, Ph.D. – English (Syracuse University, 2024)

Cooper is currently working on a book project, "Climate Justice Before the Anthropocene: How Inclement Weather Shaped British and Irish Romanticism," which examines how early environmental justice discourses emerged through literary responses to climate conditions, particularly in relation to colonialism, the slave trade, class dynamics and changing perceptions of wilderness. Cooper extends her academic work into public engagement by serving as community program director for Write Out programming at Girls Inc. and collaborating with Environmental Storytelling Central New York to connect historical environmental perspectives with contemporary climate justice initiatives. This semester, Cooper is teaching "Poetry & Environmental Justice," a course where students use writing to connect groups, foster collaboration and drive community action through shared understanding and reciprocal relationships. Additionally, as part of her postdoctoral fellow project management experience, Cooper co-leads the EHN team of undergraduate research assistants.

• Miryam Nacimento, Ph.D. - Cultural Anthropology (City University of New York/CUNY, 2024)

Nacimento’s research focuses on the intersection of agrarian politics and illicit economies in Latin America. Her first book project, based on her dissertation, "Coca Mestiza: Small Farmers, Multiculturalism, and the War on Drugs in Colombia," examines how impoverished coca farmers navigate cultural recognition, state criminalization and agrarian crisis. Nacimento also researches how illicit coca cultivation affects the Ticuna Indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon. While in residence as a Postdoctoral Fellow, Nacimento recently won a prestigious external grant from the Wenner Grenn foundation to engage in new field research. At the same time, Nacimento is engaging with local communities in Central New York through her postdoctoral fellow project management experience in the Environmental Storytelling Series, where she organizes public forums connecting food justice initiatives in Central New York and Latin America. This semester, Nacimento is also teaching a course, “Stories of Indigenous Dispossession across the Americas,” in partnership with the Skä•noñh Great Law of Peace Center, which introduces students to storytelling as an action-based research method and to develop storytelling projects that explore different cases of Indigenous dispossession in the Americas.

About the Engaged Humanities Network (EHN)

The EHN is dedicated to creating more interconnected and just communities and institutions through the support of publicly engaged research, teaching and creative projects. EHN members—scholars, teachers, students, artists and community leaders—use their skills to serve the public good and build trust across communities. The network supports participatory action research, connects undergraduate and graduate courses, collaborates on humanities and arts programs and organizes interventions for pressing needs locally and globally.

About the Syracuse University Humanities Center

Through its wide range of fellowships, programming and research support initiatives, the Syracuse University Humanities Center advances humanities research, showcases the humanities as a public good, and enhances scholarly community by bringing people together to confront some of the most pressing issues of our time. The HC’s inaugural Engaged Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowships run through June 2026, with applications for the next two-year term available in Fall 2025.