Faculty Research and Teaching Seed Fund

Teaching Seed Fund Collage

The Research and Teaching Seed Funds were created to support Penn Faculty in building new courses, creating new public engagement tools or developing innovative cross-disciplinary research projects that push the boundaries of environmental inquiry at Penn. These initiatives may still be in their early stages but should be positioned to grow into opportunities for student involvement and teaching in the Environmental Humanities. Projects may include conference planning support, specialized student or pedagogical projects, civic or community collaborations, exhibitions, and/or digital projects.

2018 Cohort

  • Nikhil Anand (Anthropology, School of Arts & Sciences) and Allison Lassiter (City and Regional Planning, PennDesign): Green Infrastructure?: An Interdisciplinary Infrastructure Workshop

  • Daniel Aldana Cohen (Sociology, School of Arts & Sciences): Street Fight: Undergraduate Research Support and Community-Building

  • Anuradha Mathur (Landscape Architecture, PennDesign), Matt Neff (Fine Arts, PennDesign), and Jim Sykes (Music, School of Arts & Sciences):'Behind the Scene': Engagement with local communities, artists, and artisans in Barmer, India

  • Karen Hogan (Biology, School of Arts & Sciences) and Orkan Telhan (Fine Arts, PennDesign): Biological Design Studio: Land, Organisms and their People

  • Michael Weisberg (Philosophy, School of Arts & Sciences) and Karen M'Closkey (Landscape Architecture, PennDesign): Community Outreach Project Involving Residents of San Cristobal in the Galápagos Islands, Ecuado

Read more about these projects in our field notes series: "Faculty Seed Fund Sprouts and Shoots"

2019 Cohort

  • Erol Akcay (Biology, School of Arts and Sciences) with Kristina Douglass (Department of Anthropology, Penn State): Cultural evolution, social networks, and sustainable natural resource use in Vezo fishers of SW Madagascar

  • Daniel Barber (Architecture, PennDesign): Workshop: Architecture and Energy Transitions: Past, Present, and Future

  • Herman Beavers (English, School of Arts & Sciences) & Suzana Berger (English, School of Arts & Sciences): Re-imagining "August Wilson and Beyond"

  • Britt Dahlberg (History and Sociology of Science, School of Arts and Sciences and Science History Institute): Living With Toxicity: Students Co-Creating New Public Engagement

  • Kristina Lyons (Anthropology, School of Arts & Sciences): Rivers Have Memory: Community Recovery of a Watershed in Times of Conflict and Transition

  • Rahul Mukherjee (English, School of Arts & Sciences): The Body and Radiation

  • Jennifer Pinto Martin (School of Nursing & School of Medicine) and Michael Weisberg (Philosophy, School of Arts & Sciences): Human Ecology of the Galápagos

  • Byron Sherwood (Biology, School of Arts & Sciences) with Katie Barott (Biology, School of Arts & Sciences), Howard Neukrug (Earth & Environmental Science, School of Arts & Sciences), Tony Croasdale (Cobbs Creek Community Center for Environmental Education) and Rebecca Rutstein: Seeing the Invisible: Bringing the Microbiomes of the Schuylkill River and Cobbs Creek to the People

  • Orkan Telhan (Fine Arts, PennDesign): The Future of Food and the Human Diet at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Read more about the plans for these projects here. First fruits will be presented at 2-3 roundtables to be convened in Spring 2020 and published in our field notes.