SGS Doctoral Students Receive Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowships
Two doctoral students at the Rutgers School of Graduate Studies (SGS) have been awarded the 2026 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship, a highly selective national fellowship that supports dissertation projects using innovative approaches to research in the humanities and social sciences.
The fellowship is awarded by the American Council of Learned Societies, with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This year, 50 fellows were selected from more than 1,000 applicants through a multi-stage peer review process. Although the program is still relatively new, it has quickly become an important marker of where doctoral research is heading; toward work that is interdisciplinary, methodologically flexible, and engaged beyond the academy.
Laurian Rosa Rosa / Geography
Laurian Rosa Rosa’s project, Colonial Remains: The Afterlives of Militarization and the Politics of Redevelopment in Eastern Puerto Rico, examines what is left behind after a military presence and how those traces continue to shape everyday life. The project focuses on the former Roosevelt Roads Naval Base in Ceiba, Puerto Rico, a site now being reshaped through tourism-led redevelopment.
Graffiti at the Roosevelt Roads Naval Base reads: 'If you're here... it is because the Marines left' Photo by Laurian Rosa Rosa.
Rather than treating militarization as abstract or distant, Laurian studies how it becomes embedded in daily experience and structured through race, gender, and class. The project brings together archival research, oral histories, ethnography, GIS, and photogrammetry. It also uses 3D reconstructions to connect visual records with lived memory. Together, these methods create a layered account of a place where past and present are deeply intertwined.
Aerial photo of Ceiba's coast taken in 1939, when the U.S. military was scouting areas to build a military installation. Source: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, ID 68148595
“I would not have been able to conduct long-term fieldwork in Puerto Rico and receive training in digital methods without the support provided by the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship,” Laurian said. “This award will elevate my project and help bring to light the history of militarization in Ceiba, Puerto Rico, a history that remains relevant in the present political climate. I am excited to begin my fieldwork and look forward to sharing my work with the people of Ceiba and my peers at Rutgers.”
Sydney Smith / History
Sydney Smith’s project, Reading for the Revolution: Black Bookstores and the Black Radical Tradition in Chicago, 1930–1980, takes a different direction but raises a related question: how ideas move through communities and take on meaning in everyday life.
The project centers on Black bookstores and reading communities on Chicago’s South Side. While there is a strong body of scholarship on Black print culture, Sydney focuses on circulation: how books were shared, discussed, and used in community contexts. In this framing, bookstores were not simply retail spaces. They were sites of learning, organizing, and exchange, closely tied to struggles around housing, employment, and education.
A 1967 catalog from Ellis' Book Store, a Black bookstore located on the South Side of Chicago during the 1960s and 70s. Ellis' Book Store Catalog, 1967, James T. McCain Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, presented in the Civil Rights Digital Library.
Methodologically, the project draws from history, urban studies, digital humanities, and descriptive bibliography. It also includes a digital storytelling component, which will make the research accessible to broader audiences and connect it to present-day questions about access to knowledge and community-based education.
“This fellowship provides an unprecedented opportunity to further my training in descriptive bibliography and digital research methods that are crucial to amplifying the history of Black bookstores in the United States,” Sydney said. “The seeds of this project were sown during my work with the Black Bibliography Project at Rutgers, and I am looking forward to applying descriptive bibliography and Black print culture studies to my own dissertation. Histories that capture the form, function, and fugitivity of Black literacy practices are increasingly urgent today. I hope that my project, especially its digital storytelling and community-engaged components, can offer a model for how to build autonomous spaces for cultural education today.”
Sydney works with fellow members of the Black Bibliography Project at Yale University's Beinecke Library. Photo credit: Amanda Awanjo.
Laurian’s and Sydney’s projects show the kind of work this fellowship is designed to recognize. Both projects move across methods, remain grounded in specific communities, and take seriously the idea that research can reach beyond the dissertation itself.
SGS services also played an important role in supporting their applications. Sydney worked with GradFund on her fellowship application and described “the guidance and support” from her GradFund advisor, Tyler Carson, as “absolutely indispensable.” Laurian attended a GradFund webinar on the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship, where two former fellows discussed their experiences during the fellowship year and application process. She also scheduled a one-on-one meeting with a GradFund advisor, who helped her better understand the fellowship and its application requirements. Laurian decided to apply after that meeting.
GradFund is a service of the School of Graduate Studies with the mission of assisting graduate students in applying for external, merit-based, research-focused funding opportunities. We offer several types of individual appointments designed to help students navigate the process of applying for externally funded fellowships and grants successfully. In addition to individual advising appointments, the team provides workshops and webinars on the best practices in fellowship advising and offers students the opportunity to enroll in our Self-Paced Guide to Fellowships and Grants on Canvas. To learn more or to make an appointment, please visit http://grad.rutgers.edu/gradfund.
Congratulations to Laurian Rosa Rosa and Sydney Smith on this well-deserved recognition.