Six UC Santa Cruz professors have received prestigious 2025 National Endowment for the Humanities awards this year, advancing scholarship on topics ranging from colonial violence to the ethical implications of artificial intelligence.
The NEH, the nation’s largest funder of the humanities, announced grants for 219 humanities projects across the country this winter.
Among the NEH grant recipients is the THINK project—Technology and Humanities Integrated Knowledge—directed by Benjamin Breen, Associate Professor of History, and with Pranav Anand, Professor of Linguistics and Faculty Director of The Humanities Institute and Zachary Zimmer, Associate Professor of Literature, as co-project directors.
This three-year program will develop humanities courses and modules that critically engage with artificial intelligence.
The other recipients of NEH funds this year include:
Amanda Smith, Associate Professor of Literature, for her project “The Nature of Conflict: Rivers, Violence and Healing in Colombia after the Peace Accords,” which explores how rivers in Colombia are gaining rights as victims of the country's armed conflict, thanks to the activism of Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities living with rivers. Smith's project examines how art, literature, and film can work in tandem with legal discourse to offer a deeper understanding of nonhuman experiences of war.
Jaimie Morse, Assistant Professor of Sociology, for “Bodies of Evidence: A History of 'Rape Kit' Protocols in U.S. Emergency Nursing and Global Humanitarian Medicine,” which investigates the evolution of sexual assault forensic protocols and their broader implications for social justice and healthcare equity.
Robert Nichols, Professor of History of Consciousness, for the project “Legacies of Two Executions,” which examines two nineteenth-century mass executions in the United States and Canada, theorizing the evolving understanding of colonial violence.
“It is my pleasure to announce these NEH grant awards to support exemplary projects that will foster discovery, education, and innovative research in the humanities,” said recent NEH Chair Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo). “This funding will strengthen our ability to preserve and share important stories from the past with future generations, and expand opportunities in communities, classrooms, and institutions to engage with the history, ideas, languages, and cultures that shape our world.”
The NEH funding supports a diverse range of initiatives, including projects to develop protocols for the stewardship and voluntary return of unethically acquired archaeological and ethnographic artifacts to their communities of origin; enrich K–12 educators’ understanding of the American Revolution through workshops at lesser-known historic sites around Boston; and produce an immersive virtual replica of the former Mount Pleasant Industrial Indian Boarding School in Michigan, established by the U.S. government in 1893 to forcibly assimilate Native American children.
“NEH grants provide the humanities with a vital lifeline, not only at UCSC but across the nation,” said UC Santa Cruz Humanities Dean Jasmine Alinder.
In 2022, Alinder received an NEH grant to launch the Humanizing Technology initiative. The grant funded a certificate in the Humanities program introducing students enrolled in the Baskin School of Engineering to humanities disciplines aimed to help them better understand the social and cultural impacts of technological change.
Alinder was the Principal Investigator for the grant, which ended in February. Pranav Anand, faculty director of The Humanities Institute, and Laura Martin, Continuing Lecturer with Porter College and the Research Program Manager with The Humanities Institute were co-PIs.
In 2023, Alinder received an NEH grant making it possible for her to co-direct a K-12 summer institute to enrich U.S. educators’ understanding of the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and the aftermath of their devastating displacement.
“These grants allow us to advance scholarship, support innovative research, and foster an inclusive intellectual environment that connects students, faculty, and the broader public,” Alinder said.
