Fellowships in the Social Sciences
Guggenheim Fellowships in the Social Sciences are awarded to anthropologists, economists, political scientists, sociologists, and geographers who have demonstrated a mastery of their field and an appetite to pursue important work.
Among these Fellows are award winners, best-selling authors, and scholars dedicated to understanding the powers at play in our world in an effort to better it. Notable Fellows include multiple winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics, such as Claudia Goldin (1987 Fellow) and Ben Bernanke (1999 Fellow); scholars of the law, such as Edward B. Foley (2022 Fellow), who studies the electoral college; and anthropologists, like Sidney Mintz (1957 Fellow), who is considered the father of the anthropology of food.
The Fellowship has offered support to individuals at critical times, sparking work that has made a measurable impact on the world.
Fellows & Works
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Navigate to "What Is the Water Trying to Tell Us?"
"What Is the Water Trying to Tell Us?"
A Conversation Between Fellows Frank Magilligan (2020 Fellow) and Sarah Cameron Sunde (2021 Fellow)
Carol
Anderson
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Field of Study
Constitutional Studies
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Years Awarded
2018
Carol Anderson, a historian, is the Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African American Studies at Emory University. At the core of her research is how policy is made and unmade, how racial inequality and racism affect that process and outcome, and how those who have taken the brunt of those laws, executive orders, and directives have worked to shape, counter, undermine, reframe, and when necessary, dismantle the legal and political edifice used to limit their rights and their humanity.
She has, therefore, examined the dearth of human rights in the United States (Eyes Off the Prize), the strategies to delegitimize colonial empires (Bourgeois Radicals), the disastrous policy responses to African Americans’ political and economic advancement (White Rage), and the impact of voter suppression on American democracy (One Person, No Vote). Those studies have been supported by an array of grants and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Ford Foundation, Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and more. Eyes off the Prize received the Gustavus Myers Book Award and the Myrna Bernath Book Award. White Rage, a New York Times Bestseller and a New York Times Editor’s Pick, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. It was also recognized as one of the best books of 2016 by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Boston Globe, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Globe and Mail.
As a scholar whose work has public policy implications, she has served on working groups dealing with race and minority rights at Stanford’s Center for Applied Science and Behavioral Studies, the Aspen Institute, and the United Nations. She has appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show, PBS Newshour, and Democracy Now!, as well as providing commentary for the Huffington Post, The Guardian, New York Times, and Washington Post.
She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Miami University, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Political Science (International Relations) and History. She earned her Ph.D. in history from The Ohio State University.
The Guggenheim Foundation is grateful to the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation for its support of Carol Anderson's Fellowship.
Stories
Claudia Goldin (1987 Fellow in Economics)
In 1987, Claudia Goldin, won a Guggenheim Fellowship to work on her book, "Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women," which is considered to be one of the first comprehensive books to investigate and explain the American wage gap. In 2023, Goldin won a Nobel Prize in economics “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes.” She is the third-ever woman to win the Nobel Prize in economics, and the first woman to not share the prize with another person. Jakob Svensson, the Chair of the Committee for the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences commented, “Understanding women’s role in the labour is important for society. Thanks to Claudia Goldin’s groundbreaking research we now know much more about the underlying factors and which barriers may need to be addressed in the future."
Edward
Foley
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Field of Study
Constitutional Studies
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Years Awarded
2023
Edward B. Foley holds the Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law at The Ohio State University, where he also directs its election law program. He is a contributing opinion columnist for the Washington Post, and in 2020 served as an NBC News election law analyst. His book Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2016) was named Finalist for the David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Legal History and listed as one of 100 “must-read books about law and social justice”. His most recent book, Presidential Elections and Majority Rule (Oxford University Press, 2020), provides a basis for reform that would enable the Electoral College to operate according to its majority-rule objectives. As Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Project on Election Administration, Foley drafted Principles of Law: Non-Precinct Voting and Resolution of Ballot-Counting Disputes. He has also co-authored Election Law and Litigation: The Judicial Regulation of Politics (Wolters Kluwer 2014). Foley clerked for Chief Judge Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Justice Harry Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court. He has also served as State Solicitor in the office of Ohio’s Attorney General.
The Guggenheim Foundation is grateful to the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation for its endowed support of Edward B. Foley's Fellowship.
Stories
Abram Lincoln Harris
Economist Abram Lincoln Harris was a four-time Fellow (in 1935, 1936, 1943, and 1953). Harris' work concentrated on the analysis of class and labor and their connection to issues of race and racism. One of the first Black scholars to achieve prominence in his field, Harris is probably best known for his books "The Black Worker" and "The Negro as Capitalist," works that continue to inform and shape economic and historical thought today. He led the Howard University economics department before moving to the University of Chicago in 1945, becoming one of the university's first Black academics.
Janet Yellen (1985 Fellow in Economics)
Janet Yellen became a Fellow in economics in 1985, when she was a professor at UC Berkeley. During her Fellowship term, she co-authored four significant papers. She went on to be the first female chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014-2018 and, as of 2021, the first woman to be the Secretary of the Treasury. She is the first person ever to have led the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and the White House Council of Economic Advisers.