Spring 2025 Leave Grant Recipients
Michael Durst
Physics
Professor Durst received a grant to support research on fluorescence spectroscopy with dyes that absorb light in the near infrared. This grant will support the dissemination of two-photon spectral data and the development of an interactive plotting tool to visualize the data. The goal of this project is to investigate the properties of these near-infrared dyes and to use the spectral data to identify the optimal dyes for a particular microscope platform.
Amanda Gregg
Economics
Professor Gregg received a grant for a project that will center on the collection and analysis of new micro-level census data describing agriculture and the economy in late nineteenth-century New England.Professor Gregg studies how agricultural in Vermont changed substantially throughout the nineteenth century as improvements in transportation and changing tariff regimes brought Northeastern farms into competition with potentially more efficient farms in the Midwest and elsewhere.
Sujata Moorti
Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies
Professor Moorti received a grant to support the creation of a digital archive, work with student research assistants, present at two conferences (in Scotland and Denmark), and possibly return to archives for higher-resolution images. She is developing a digital project to archive primary data and offer new analytical angles. Using ArcGIS, she has created storymaps to highlight key magazine content relevant to contemporary women’s organizations.
Kathryn Morse
History and Environmental Studies
Professor Morse received a grant to continue work on a born-digital book on the Scalar platform, entitled “After Migrant Mother: Conserving Race, Land, and Family in New Deal America. This work integrates analysis of qualitative historical records from poor families who received loans from the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in the late 1930s; visual records from the FSA Historical Section photographic archive; and data analysis and visualization of rates of land ownership and tenancy from the US Agricultural Census, 1920-1960.
Marybeth Nevins
Anthropology and Linguistics
Professor Nevins received a grant to digitize legacy text collections (beginning with two—Western Apache and Maidu—that I know well and have already completed keying in) so that they are searchable; and then use that search function to re-engage these collections for evidence of how the speaker was addressing themselves to the researcher and to imagined (figured in their own language choices) audiences further afield. In other words, approach these collections for evidence of indigenous political voice.
Louisa Stein
Film and Media Culture
Professor Stein received a grant for the “Old is New” project which aims to make classic cinema accessible to modern audiences by creating both short-form content and in-depth video essays across social media platforms. Through this multi-format approach, this initiative will develop new frameworks for translating academic film analysis into engaging digital content that reaches beyond traditional academic boundaries.