Six professors win Guggenheim awards
Six Hopkins professors won Guggenheim Fellowships this year, three of whom teach on the Homewood campus. More Hopkins professors won the prestigious research grant this year than in the last ten years at Hopkins.
Generally encompassing a period of six to 12 months, the Guggenheim Fellowships are awarded to support outstanding scholars in their research work.
The Hopkins professors awarded the fellowship will be using the funding to work in a variety of fields.
"This award will allow me to write a book on which I have been working for quite a few years, and which now requires a period of uninterrupted time to complete," said philosophy professor Eckart Förster, who will use the Guggenheim to finish a book on Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Hegel.
"The Guggenheim will allow me write a book during the next academic year about how and why American families are different from families in other wealthy countries," said Andrew Cherlin, the Griswold professor of public policy and sociology.
Professor Christopher Sogge, chairman of the department of mathematics, plans to research wave equations on Riemannian manifolds.
"I was very happy to get the Guggenheim. It comes at a good time for me. I am stepping down as chair of the mathematics department and want to be able to travel and catch up on research next year," said Sogge.
He added, "The Guggenheim will help a lot. Next semester, I will be co-organizing a semester-long program in my area at the Mathematics Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley. In the spring I'll visit Paris."
M. Gregg Bloche, adjunct professor in the department of health policy and management at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, will use his funding to write a book titled Hippocrates' Myth: Medicine in the Public Sphere.
Professor Piero Gleijeses at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced Academic Studies will write a book on Cuban and U.S. policy toward Southern Africa in the Carter and Reagan years. He will use his money to travel to Europe, Africa and Cuba, the last of which has allowed him access to closed documents.
"Considering the documents I have I would have to be an idiot not to write a good book," said Gleijeses.
The money given in the Guggenheim Fellowships varies depending on the project.
"In my case, there is not very much money involved," said Förster. "Unlike scientists or movie directors who need to apply for considerable amounts of money to carry out their projects, a philosopher is known to not need much money to do his job - and consequently is awarded relatively little."
Förster and Gleijeses both complained that there are currently few fellowships available in the humanities.
"There are unfortunately very few scholarships in the humanities left to apply to. This year I was eligible only for a Guggenheim and the National Humanities Center, so I sent in an application to both and hoped for the best," said Förster.
"This fellowship will help me to take a six-month academic sabbatical, my first in 16 years while at Hopkins," said Guohua Li, a professor of emergency medicine at the School of Medicine.
"The substantive area of my funded research is injury epidemiology and control," said Li. "Hopefully I can publish these results in a book titled Safe Aging."
According to Cherlin, the application process forces scholars to distill their ideas and accomplishments into five pages: a three-page research proposal and a two-page account of the applicant's career. The applications must also be supplemented by four letters of recommendation.