April 8, 2011

SNRE Professor and Associate Dean Arun Agrawal was one of 180 recipients of the 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship. The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation supports scholars, artists and scientists selected from 3,000 applicants on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise. Professor Agrawal will use the fellowship support to complete a book called "Poverty and Adaptation."

"Lost in the shuffle are the real victims of future climate change and contemporary climate variability" the poor farmer, the disadvantaged fisher, the landless laborer, the illiterate sharecropper, the homeless urban resident, and the elderly lower caste woman,"  Professor Agrawal said.  At the same time, he suggests, "There is much to be learned from successful—as well as unsuccessful—adaptations to historically experienced calamities and slow-onset climate disasters."

Professor Agrawal will be on sabbatical in 2011-12 to pursue his research.

The foundation awarded the 180 fellowships Thursday to individuals for distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. The four other U-M fellows and the topics for which they were honored are:

• Jeffrey Heath, professor of linguistics—Textual and video documentation of the Dogon languages of Mali.
• Mark Mizruchi, professor of sociology and business—The decline of the American corporate elite.
• Endi Poskovic, artist and associate professor of art and design—Fine arts.
• Jennifer Robertson, professor of anthropology—Safety, security, convenience: The political economy of service robots in Japan.

"Our faculty members who've been selected for Guggenheim Fellowships are outstanding scholars in their disciplines," said U-M Provost Phil Hanlon. "They exemplify the strength and diversity of faculty work at the university and we are very proud of their accomplishments."

Since 1925, the foundation has granted almost $290 million in fellowships to more than 17,000 individuals in the United States and Canada. The full list of 2011 fellows is available at www.gf.org.