Museum Studies Program, U-M Rackham Graduate School

Doctoral Research

The University of Michigan Museum Studies Program is pleased to offer a competitive fellowship to doctoral students in the program. Through the “Fellowship for Doctoral Research in Museums,” the Museum Studies Program provides awards up to $10,000 to MSP students whose dissertation research is explicitly situated in or around museums and related institutions. MSP students must have completed the Museum Studies Proseminar and at least 3 credits of the cognate course requirement to be considered for this funding award. In addition, applicants must have passed their PhD qualifying exams and defended their dissertation prospectus. Additional information and the application form can be found on the MSP Dropbox site.

Applications will be reviewed two times every year, on October 1 and April 1.

Contributions by several of our FDRM awardees are included among the MSP Working Papers.

UM Museum Studies Program Fellowship for Doctoral Research in Museums

Since the FDRM program was initiated in 2008, the following students have received funding support for their research:

Awarded 2024

Emily Cornish

  • MSP18, History of Art
  • Indigenizing Photography: A Comparative Look at Images of Ali’i and Rangatira in Nineteenth-Century Hawai’i and Aotearoa-New Zealand

Heidi Hilliker

  • MSP20, Middle Eastern Studies
  • With Every Fiber of Their Beings: The Social Contexts of Textile Production in Pharaonic Egypt

Alexandria Rayburn

  • MSP19, Information
  • Women in Museum Computing: Implementing Transformative Data Practices in Collection Work

Awarded 2023

Comfort Mtotha

  • MSP19, History
  • Collecting Malawi in the 20th century: a tale of entangled ethnographic objects in the museums of Malawi and Scotland

Hannah Hoover

  • MSP19, Anthropology
  • Networking Households, Building a Nation: Archaeological Investigation of 18th Century Yamasee towns in South Carolina

Richard Bachmann

  • MSP20, History
  • The Strains and Stresses of Technological Change: Factory Automation, Working Bodies, and the Making of the Postwar Mental Health Regime, 1955–73

Awarded 2022

Zachary Kopin

  • MSP16, History
  • Ordering the New World: A History of Law in Plymouth Colony

Caroline Nemechek

  • MSP19, Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art & Archaeology
  • Crafting Identities: Roman Mosaics and Social Agency

Mariane Stanev

  • MSP16, Comparative Literature
  • How to Hear Noise in Times of Peace: Towards an Abolitionist Transimperial Cultural History of Pacification in the U.S. and Latin America

Awarded 2021

Alexandra Norwood

  • MSP18, Biological Anthropology
  • Reconstructing South African Landscapes at the Last Glacial Maximum

Zoe Ortiz

  • MSP16, Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art & Archaeology
  • The Sculptures and Urban Landscape of Imperial Gabii: A City in Transition

Awarded 2019

Grace Mahoney

  • MSP16, Slavic Languages and Literature
  • Behind Cream Curtains: Estates, Museums, and their Literary Interlocutors in Early-Soviet Culture, 1917-1930

Felix Zamora-Gomez

  • MSP16, Romance Languages and Literature
  • Foundational Landscapes: Regimes of Visuality and the Construction of New Narratives of History and Heritage in 20th Century Spain

Awarded 2018

Allan Martell

  • MSP15, Information Science
  • Memory Labor as Memory Making: The Negotiation of Collective Remembering through the Production of Museum Exhibits

Kathryn Holihan

  • MSP14, German Languages and Literature
  • Displaying the Hygienic Body: The Popular Hygiene Exhibition in Germany, 1880-1931

Awarded 2017

Emma Sachs

  • MSP10, Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art & Archaeology
  • Stylistic Allusions in Campanian Wall Painting

Alice Tsay

  • MSP13, English
  • Matters of Taste: Digesting Difference in Victorian and Edwardian Culture

Ben Tupper

  • MSP14, Educational Studies
  • Educational Practice and Professional Development of Docents in a Botanical Garden

Awarded 2016

Ashley Miller

  • MSP10, History of Art
  • Locating Heritage in French Colonial Morocco (ca. 1912-1931)

Awarded 2015

Diana Sierra-Becerra

  • MSP12, History and Women’s Studies
  • Without Women There is no Revolution: Gender and Social Movements in Twentieth-Century El Salvador

Abigail Celis

  • MSP11, Romance Languages
  • Reading Museums, Imagining Communities

Awarded 2014

Courtney Cottrell

  • MSP12, Anthropology
  • Educating History: Colonial Practices of Ethnographic Museums and How Tribal Museums are Changing Them

Justin Meyer

  • MSP12, Urban Planning
  • Art Museums and their Connection to Urban Development

Awarded 2013

Sarah Gothie

  • MSP09, American Culture
  • Gardens of Innocence and Experience

Awarded 2012

Andrew Gurstelle

  • MSP09, Anthropology
  • Sacred Trees of the Savè Hills Cultural Landscape

Kelly Kirby

  • MSP05, Anthropology
  • Clothing, Kinship, and Gifts: Transnational Wardrobes in Senegal and the Diaspora

Ricardo L. Punzalan

  • MSP08, Information
  • Challenges and Barriers to Virtual Reunification: The Case of the Dispersed Ethnographic Images of Dean C. Worcester

Awarded 2011

Luciana Aenasoiae

  • MSP08, Anthropology and History
  • Activating Social Networks: Memory, Acquaintances, and Marginality in Romanian Transformation Discourses

Morgan Daniels

  • MSP06, Information Science
  • Museum Data Collections: From Object to Representation to the Production of New Knowledge

Aimee Von Bokel

  • MSP08, American Culture
  • Two Museums, One Story: The Lower East Side Tenement Museum and the Weeksville Heritage Center

Awarded 2010

Clara Cahill

  • MSP09, Education
  • Zydeco: Fostering Seamless Connections between the Classroom and the Museum

Christopher Berk

  • MSP07, Anthropology
  • Building Bodies in the Australian Periphery: The Enactment of Aboriginality in Tasmania

Awarded 2009

Deirdre Hennebury

  • MSP04, Architecture
  • An Investigation of the Urban, Architectural and Exhibit Designs of the Tate Museums, Millbank and Liverpool

Awarded 2008

Hima Mallampati

  • MSP05, IPCAA
  • Acquiring Antiquity: Plunder, Provenance and Policy in Museums

Ipek Kaynar Rohloff

  • MSP04, Architecture
  • Aligning Museum Building Projects with Institutional Goals: A Visitor-Experience Centered Approach

Keun Young Kim

  • MSP06, Anthropology
  • FDRM awarded 2008
  • Multiculturalism and Museums in China

Christine DeLisle

  • MSP05, History and Women’s Studies
  • Civilizing the Guam Museum