Two faculty members win Andrew Carnegie Fellowships for research

Yale historian Rohit De and social psychologist Jennifer Richeson are among the 27 individuals named as 2020 Andrew Carnegie Fellows. They will each receive $200,000 in philanthropic support for “high-caliber scholarly research in the humanities and social sciences that addresses important and enduring issues confronting our society,” according to an announcement from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Considered one of the most generous research stipends of its kind, the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program was established in 2015 and has since invested $38 million in some 200 recipients whose scholarly research spans such subjects as U.S. democracy, the environment, technological and cultural evolution, and international relations. Fellow are chosen for their originality, the potential impact of their research, and their ability to communicate their findings to a broader audience.

“The pursuit of knowledge and the generation of ideas were critically important to the corporation’s founder, Andrew Carnegie, whose mission is especially relevant today as our society confronts problems that have been greatly exacerbated by COVID-19,” said Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York and president emeritus of Brown University. “Fellows from earlier classes are actively addressing the coronavirus through their research on topics such as its impact on rural America, government authority during a pandemic, and ways in which different countries address infectious diseases. The work of this exemplary Class of 2020 will also be of service across a range of other crucial issues.”

De, an associate professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and associate research scholar in law, is a legal historian who studies South Asia, postcolonialism, and the role of lawyers in politics. Among other topics, his research has explored the significance of political trials in Asia and Africa in the 1950s, and constitutions in South Asia. He is the author of “A People’s Constitution: Law and Everyday Life in the Indian Republic,” published in 2018. He earned his LL.M. from Yale Law School in 2006.

Richeson, the Philip R. Allen Professor of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, examines how people experience racial and other forms of societal diversity, be it efforts to navigate one-on-one interracial interactions or the political consequences of the increasing racial and ethnic diversity of the United States. Much of her recent research considers how people reason about and respond to societal inequality and injustice. She is the director of Yale’s Social and Perception Lab, which examines the ways in which social group memberships and affiliations — such as race, gender, and socioeconomic status — impact how people think, feel, and behave. She has been honored with many awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship, and was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.