The Penn Program in Environmental Humanities (PPEH) at the University of Pennsylvania invites applications for three summer graduate fellowships. We seek applicants whose research, teaching, and public engagements support and complement PPEH’s core commitments:
- broadly interdisciplinary, collaborative inquiry across the arts and sciences
- arts-driven inquiry into place, particularly our campus and the City of Philadelphia as well as urban ecology in other global contexts
- public engagement, particularly in and with environmental justice communities and concerns
- the creation and growth of “living archives” via practices of “urgent collection”
Summer Graduate Fellows participate actively in the Program’s signature public environmental humanities projects, in Philadelphia and beyond. In consultation with program faculty and staff, fellows may develop their own projects under the umbrella of PPEH’s current experiments: My Climate Story, Futures Beyond Refining, and Ecotopian Toolkit. Fellows will also mentor undergraduate project interns; liaise with faculty and staff; collaborate with current and prospective community partners, including high school teachers; develop public engagements, including lesson plans.
Candidates’ application materials will explicitly consider their commitment to public engagements and how their research and teaching intersect with community-based participatory research on the environment and climate and sustainability literacy more generally.
The Fellowships each carry a stipend of $4,500. During their 8 weeks in residence (June 1--July 31, 2022), each Fellow will be required to work 35 hours a week. Past PPEH Fellows’ public research projects include public art/history/science installations, organization of reading groups and workshop series, a conference or un-conference, co-authored articles, a co-edited book, an installation, oral history projects, and podcasting. For further information, visit us at ppehlab.org
Deadline for all application materials, including transcripts and letters of recommendation: March 15, 2022.
The Penn Program in Environmental Humanities is strongly committed to Penn’s Action Plan for Faculty Diversity and Excellence and to creating a more diverse faculty (for more information see: http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/volumes/v58/n02/diversityplan.html.) The University of Pennsylvania is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Minorities/Women/Individuals with disabilities/Protected Veterans are encouraged to apply.
Call for Applications
Application deadline: March 15, 2022
To apply, please submit the following via email to director@ppehlab.org:
- 500-word research statement. This statement introduces your dissertation, planned dissertation, or M.A./M.S project and indicates how it intersects with the environmental humanities. Please consider how this work might foster collaboration across disciplines and might engage audiences beyond the academy.
- 500-word statement on how you envision your participation in one of PPEH’s ongoing public research projects.
- 250-word statement on your teaching and mentoring philosophy and practices.
- C.V.
All documents should be submitted as a single PDF, with the file name <PPEHgrad_your Last name_First name.pdf> (e.g., PPEHgrad_Franklin_Ben.pdf)
Also required:
- One confidential letter of recommendation from your dissertation advisor or graduate chair. Please ask your referee to email their letter to director@ppehlab.org no later than the application deadline, March 15, 2022