"No strings attached" is not a phrase you hear too often in the world of foundation grants, and that's partly what makes the MacArthur Fellows unique. Another feature: the size of the prize itself. Today the MacArthur Foundation announced that 22 "exceptionally creative people" will each receive grants of $800,000.
This year's Fellows include performing and visual artists, writers, scientists, historians, activists and one filmmaker, Sterlin Harjo. The MacArthur Foundation considers these grants as investments in people whose "ideas, experiments, and solutions expand our expectations of what's possible."
The 2024 class is made up of 11 women, 10 men and 1 non-binary person, and ranges in age from 39 (Shamel Pitts, Martha Mu帽oz and Loka Ashwood) to 75 (Juan Felipe Herrera). The breadth of their work spans just about every aspect of science and society, from computer technology to evolutionary biology, disability justice to children's literature.
鈥淭he 2024 MacArthur Fellows pursue rigorous inquiry with aspiration and purpose," Marlies Carruth, the director of the MacArthur Fellows Program, said in a statement. "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.鈥�
The 2024 MacArthur Fellows Are:
Loka Ashwood of the University of Kentucky is a sociologist 鈥渟hedding light on rural identity and culture, and on the ecological, economic and social challenges facing many rural communities.鈥� MPR News in 2022.
Ruha Benjamin of Princeton University is a scholar and writer, 鈥渋lluminating how technology reflects and reproduces inequality and championing the role of imagination in social transformation.鈥� Benjamin joined KERA in February .
Justin Vivian Bond of New York is an artist and performer 鈥渨orking in the cabaret tradition and weaving cultural critique and an ethic of care into performances that center queer joy.鈥� Bond for NPR Music in 2022.
Jericho Brown of Emory University is a poet 鈥渞eflecting on contemporary culture and identity in works that combine formal experimentation and intense self-examination.鈥� on On Being with Krista Tippett.
Tony Cokes of Brown University is a media artist 鈥渃reating video works that re-contextualize historical and cultural moments.鈥�
Nicola Dell of Cornell Tech is a computer and information scientist 鈥渄eveloping technology interventions to address the needs of overlooked populations, such as survivors of intimate partner violence.鈥�
Johnny Gandelsman of New Paltz, NY, is a violinist and producer 鈥渞eimagining classical works and nurturing the creation of new music across styles and genres.鈥� Clarice Assad's O, which was one of 22 new works for violin he commissioned in 2020.
Sterlin Harjo of Tulsa, Okla., is a filmmaker 鈥渢elling stories about the daily lives of contemporary Native Americans with humor and deep affection.鈥� In 2022, that he and the other creators of the series Reservation Dogs wanted to give audiences 鈥減ermission to laugh with us.鈥� Harjo recently joined NPR鈥檚 Rachel Martin
Juan Felipe Herrera of Fresno, Calif., is 鈥渁 poet, educator and writer uplifting Chicanx culture and amplifying shared experiences of solidarity and empowerment.鈥� In 2017, NPR where he read poems, shared his creative process, and explained how poems create change in "personal, intimate, and momentary" ways.
Ling Ma of Chicago is a fiction writer 鈥渕ixing speculative and realist modes of storytelling to throw into relief the surreal aspects of our contemporary condition.鈥� In 2018, Ma spoke with NPR鈥檚 Ari Shapiro and in 2022, Fresh Air鈥檚 book critic Maureen Corrigan shared
Jennifer L. Morgan of New York University is a historian 鈥渄eepening understanding of how the exploitation of enslaved women enabled the institutionalization of race-based slavery in early America and the Black Atlantic.鈥�
Martha Mu帽oz of Yale University, is an evolutionary biologist 鈥渋nvestigating the motors and brakes of evolution.鈥�
Shailaja Paik of the University of Cincinnati is a historian 鈥渆xploring the intersection of caste, gender, and sexuality in modern India through the lives of Dalit women.鈥� in 2023 and to NPR in 2024: "History isn鈥檛 a dead subject," . "Our attitude to the past shapes how we think about the present and how we build our future."
Joseph Parker of the California Institute of Technology is an evolutionary biologist 鈥渦ncovering the origins of symbiosis in rove beetles and the evolution of complex organismal traits.鈥�
Ebony G. Patterson of Kingston, Jamaica, and Chicago is a multimedia artist 鈥渃reating visually dazzling works that explore themes of visibility, beauty, race, class, violence, mourning, and regeneration.鈥� Patterson on WABE in 2023.
Shamel Pitts of Brooklyn, NY, is a dancer and choreographer 鈥減ioneering experimental performance works inspired by Afrofuturism while reimagining collective ways of world-building.鈥�
Wendy Red Star of Portland, Ore., is a visual artist 鈥渆ngaging with archival materials in works that challenge colonial historical narratives.鈥� Red Star was featured in 2019 and on WNYC in 2022.
Jason Reynolds of Washington, D.C., is a children鈥檚 and young adult writer 鈥渄epicting the rich inner lives of kids of color and ensuring that they see themselves and their communities in literature.鈥� In 2022, Reynolds spoke with Morning Edition's A Mart铆nez, and fostering a love of reading. He in 2023 to talk book bans and Spider-Man, and in 2021.
Dorothy Roberts of the University of Pennsylvania, is a legal scholar and public policy researcher 鈥渆xposing racial inequities embedded in social service systems and uplifting the experiences of people caught up in them.鈥� She was featured on the TED Radio Hour in 2021, talking about 鈥� and why that can be dangerous.
Keivan G. Stassun of Vanderbilt University is a science educator and astronomer 鈥渆xpanding opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and careers for underrepresented populations.鈥�
Benjamin Van Mooy of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, is an oceanographer 鈥渋nvestigating how microbial organisms shape cycling of elements fundamental to life in marine environments.鈥� Van Mooy in 2010.
Alice Wong of Disability Visibility Project, is 鈥渁 writer, editor and disability justice activist increasing the political and cultural visibility of people with disabilities and catalyzing broader understandings of disability.鈥� in 2023: 鈥淢y work is part of a larger collective body of wisdom by disabled people from the past, present, and future. Some of us may be out of time but we are immortal.鈥�
Beth Novey contributed to this story.
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