Kudos for Summer 2014

Here are some alumni accomplishments that we learned about in June.

Henrike Florusbosch (MSP03)

Henrike has published an article in Anthropology News on two community-based heritage initiatives in West Africa.  The article, “Chiefs and Griots Making Culture: The Politics and Economics of Local Heritage Initiatives in Mali and Ghana,” can be found here.

Michael Andre (MSP04)

Michael is in the final stages of two book-length translations for publication for the Klassik Stiftung Weimar in Weimar, Germany (the site of his MSP internship in 2005). One project concerns the textile designs of Henry van de Velde and the other addresses a new permanent installation in the Goethe-Nationalmuseum. Michael lives with wife and son in the California Bay Area, where he works independently as a translator and editor while also pursuing his own research and writing.

Erica Lehrer (MSP04)

Erica’s ethnographic monograph, Jewish Poland Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places, was posted as a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and won an honorable mention in the Association for the Jewish Studies Jordan Schnitzer Book Award. She also has received a $20,000 grant from the Kronhill-Pletka Foundation to create a book and website based on her 2013 exhibition of Jewish figurines in Polish folk art, Souvenir, Talisman, Toy, at the Krakow Ethnographic Museum.

Heloise Finch-Boyer (MSP05)

Heloise, Curator of Science & Technology at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, has curated Longitude Punk’d, an exhibition at the Royal Observatory Greenwich which takes a tongue-in-cheek look at the history of science, showcasing fantastical inventions commissioned by nine Steampunk artists alongside real historic objects. She has also obtained funding from the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council to co-supervise two joint doctoral projects between the National Maritime Museum and two UK universities.  Heloise has also been awarded a Trevor Walden Bursary from the UK Museums Association, which will sponsor upcoming research in Montreal.

Mya Gosling (MSP06)

Mya has taken a position as Southeast Asia copy cataloger with the International Studies unit at the University of Michigan Graduate Library. In her spare time, she draws Shakespearean stick figure comics for her website, GoodTickleBrain.com.

Alison Byrnes (MSP06)

Alison is teaching her fourth semester of museum and gallery practices at Srishti School of Art, Design & Technology in Bangalore, India; the course currently focuses on education in museums.  Last semester she spent two months at an artist’s residency in upstate New York to make a book called Scientific Theories Once Widely Believed, Since Proven Wrong, which covers such topics as phrenology, alchemy, and Einstein’s cosmological constant.

Helen Dixon (MSP07)

Helen’s postdoctoral contract at North Carolina State University has been renewed through the 2014-15 year.  Helen has also been accepted to participate in a 2014 NEH Summer Institute, Mortality: Facing Death in Ancient Greece, hosted in Athens, Greece.

Bea Zengotitabengoa (MSP07)

Bea celebrated the birth of her son, Eneko Miller, in December 2013.

Marc Levitt (MSP08)

Marc has been appointed to the Executive Committee for the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress (ACSC) and is the Standing Committee liaison for the Congressional Papers Roundtable (CPR) in the Society of American Archivists (SAA).  In 2013 he taught “Introduction to Archives” at Shepherd University and spoke at the annual Legislative Data and Transparency Conference. He will be speaking on a panel at the 2014 annual meeting of the Society for History in the Federal Government (SHFG).  He also has a new addition to his family: his son William.

Joe Cialdella (MSP09)

Joe has published several essays, including one about a project he undertook through Arts of Citizenship for the December issue of Perspectives on History (digital version here.  He also wrote a gallery essay for Environmental History about photographs of Detroit, “Looking for Nature in the Rust Belt: The Sublime of Andrew Moore’s Detroit Disassembled,” found here.

John Kannenberg (MSP10)

John has published several articles online about his work recording the sounds of museums, including “Listening to the Active Sounds of History: Field Recording and Museums,” an essay commissioned by the British Library, and “Mapping the Sounds of Collections: Listening to Museums and Archives,” an essay commissioned by the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology. John has also recently finished another major museum sound map, that of the Art Institute of Chicago, which will be released on CD later this year by the 3Leaves record label in Hungary. A sound file trailer for the upcoming album release can be found here.

Gina Konstantopoulos (MSP10)

Gina was awarded the Sylvan C. Coleman and Pamela Coleman Memorial Fund Fellowship to support the research and writing of her dissertation, hosted by the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art over the 2014-2015 academic year.

Ashley Miller (MSP10)

Ashley has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research in Morocco for the 2014-15 academic year.  She is currently finishing six months of dissertation research in Paris, supported by the Georges Lurcy Charitable and Educational Trust Foundation.

Emma Sachs (MSP10)

Emma has received a year-long Bothmer Fellowship to conduct research for her dissertation with the Department of Greek and Roman Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art over the 2014-15 academic year.

Jenny Kreiger (MSP11)

Jenny has received a Fulbright Fellowship to spend the 2014-15 academic year in Naples, Italy, where she will be studying catacomb art, inscriptions, and architecture in museums, archives, and archaeological sites.

Molly McGuire (MSP11)

Molly has taken a position at the Detroit Institute of Arts as a Collections Information Specialist.

Kayla Romberger (MSP11)

Kayla has been working as the programming intern at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.