Rebecca Boehling and Kate Brown have won a coveted semester-long fellowship from The American Academy in Berlin. Boehling and Brown, both professors in UMBC’s history department, are two of just 23 scholars selected nationwide to receive Berlin Prize Fellowships, which are awarded annually to scholars, writers, composers, and artists from the United States who represent the “highest standards of excellence in their fields.”
During the fall 2016 semester, Rebecca Boehling will use the fellowship in Berlin to make a comparative assessment of how the United States, Great Britain, and France approached the process of undoing Nazi influences in post-World War II German society. She will examine the divergent theories behind denazification and how they were implemented. From 2013-2015, Boehling was director of the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany.
In spring 2017, Kate Brown will continue her research project by writing a history of human survival in the territories surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. She is conducting a large-scale, archival-based history of Chernobyl to explore how citizens negotiated daily life with exposures to radioactive isotopes. Last month, Brown received a prestigious research fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
“We look forward to welcoming another group of outstanding fellows to the Academy. By working with their peers and partner institutions in Berlin and presenting their projects to the public, they will actively contribute to the exchange of ideas,” said Academy president Gerhard Casper in a news release announcing the 2016-17 awards.
The fellows were chosen by an independent selection committee and they are encouraged to work with individuals and institutions in The American Academy in Berlin’s established network to forge connections and lasting partnerships.
This is the first time that UMBC professors have received the prestigious fellowship. Read more about Rebecca Boehling and Kate Brown on the history department website. For more information about The American Academy in Berlin, visit the Academy’s website.
Top image: Kate Brown speaks at the 2015 Presidential Faculty and Staff Awards Ceremony. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.
