The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has announced the 22 winners of the 2024 MacArthur Fellowships, regarded as one of the nation’s most prestigious awards for intellectual and artistic achievement.
Each award, commonly known as the “genius grant,” carries an $800,000 stipend. It’s paid in quarterly installments over five years with “no strings attached” on how recipients can spend the money. The winners are selected from nominees who undergo a lengthy vetting that involves evaluations by leaders in various fields.
The three basic criteria used to select MacArthur fellows are:
- Exceptional creativity;
- Promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments; and
- Potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.
The MacArthur Foundation awards the fellowships directly to individuals rather than through institutions. According to the foundation, the “recipients may be writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, or individuals in other fields, with or without institutional affiliations.”
The fellows may use their fellowship to advance their expertise, engage in new work, or, if they wish, change fields or alter the direction of their careers. The interdisciplinary award seeks to enable people with a track record and the potential to produce additional extraordinary work.
According to a statement from Marlies Carruth, Director of the MacArthur Fellows program, “The 2024 MacArthur Fellows pursue rigorous inquiry with aspiration and purpose. They expose biases built into emerging technologies and social systems and fill critical gaps in the knowledge of cycles that sustain life on Earth. Their work highlights our shared humanity, centering the agency of disabled people, the humor and histories of Indigenous communities, the emotional lives of adolescents, and perspectives of rural Americans.”
The 2024 fellows are:
Loka Ashwood, a sociologist at the University of Kentucky who studies how environmental issues, corporations and state policy interact to affect rural communities, reducing their trust in democracy.
Ruha Benjamin, the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, where she specializes in the interdisciplinary study of science, medicine, and technology, focusing on the relationship between innovation and social inequity.
Justin Vivian Bond, an artist and performer working in the cabaret tradition to explore the political and cultural ethos of the moment, particularly those involving queer communities.
Jericho Brown, a poet and the Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing and Interim Director of Creative Writing at Emory University.
Tony Cokes, a media artist at Brown University who creates video works that recontextualize historical and cultural moments.
Nicola Dell, Associate Professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and in the Information Science Department at Cornell University. She uses technology interventions to address the needs of vulnerable people, in particular survivors of intimate partner violence and home healthcare workers.
Johnny Gandelsman, a violinist and producer who performs classical and contemporary works.
Sterlin Harjo, a Tulsa, Oklahoma filmmaker who tells stories about the daily lives of contemporary Native Americans, especially those from his own Seminole and Muscogee communities in Oklahoma.
Juan Felipe Herrera, a Fresno, California poet, educator and writer “uplifting Chicanx culture and amplifying shared experiences of solidarity and empowerment through poetry and prose for adults and children.”
Ling Ma, a Chicago-based fiction writer “mixing speculative and realist modes of storytelling to reflect on the systems that structure our lives in a globalized, capitalist era.”
Jennifer L. Morgan, Professor of Social & Cultural Analysis & History at New York University. According to her citation, her work deepens our “understanding of how the system of race-based slavery developed in early America.”
Martha Muñoz, Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University Connecticut, whose research investigates the factors that influence rates and patterns of evolution.
Shaikaja Paik, the Taft Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Cincinnati whose research focuses on “the intersection of caste, gender, and sexuality through the lives of Dalit (“Untouchable”) women. “
Joseph Parker, Assistant Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. He researches “the evolution of symbiosis and species interactions through the study of rove beetles that coexist with ants.”
Ebony G. Patterson, a Kingston, Jamaica and Chicago multimedia artist who creates “intricate, densely layered, and visually dazzling works that center the culture and aesthetics of postcolonial spaces.” Her practice includes painting, photography, video, performance, sculpture, textiles, and installation.
Shame Pitts, a choreographer and dancer developing multidisciplinary, performance-based works that imagine new ways of being in the world. She is the founder and artistic director of TRIBE, a group of artists working in a various media, including lighting design, video technologies, electronic music composition, cinematography, and video art.
Wendy Red Star, a Portland, Oregon visual artist who uses archival material to challenge colonial narratives and study the perspective of Native Americans.
Jason Reynolds, creative writing faculty member at Lesley University. He writes children’s and young adult books that “reflect the rich inner lives of kids of color and offer profound moments of human connection.”
Dorothy Roberts, the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work, which encompasses reproductive health, bioethics and child welfare, focuses on the racial inequities within health and social service systems.
Keivan G. Stassun, the Stevenson Professor of Physics & Astronomy at Vanderbilt University. He has worked to expand opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math education and careers for underrepresented populations; in addition to his research in astrophysics, which involves star evolution and exoplanet discovery.
Benjamin Van Mooy, an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who investigates the role that microbial organisms play in marine environments.
Alice Wong, a San Francisco writer, editor, and disability justice activist who founded the Disability Visibility Project in 2014.
There are no restrictions on becoming a MacArthur Fellow, except that nominees must be either residents or citizens of the U.S., and they cannot hold elective office or advanced positions in government. Since 1981, 1,131 MacArthur Fellows have been named.