Newswise — New York University historian Stephen Gross has been named a 2017 Andrew Carnegie Fellow, one of 35 selected by the Carnegie Corporation this year.

Each fellow will receive up to $200,000 toward the funding of significant research and writing in the social sciences and humanities.

“The program recognizes an exceptional group of both established and emerging scholars, journalists, and authors with the goal of strengthening U.S. democracy, driving technological and cultural creativity, exploring global connections and global ruptures, and improving both natural and human environments,” the Carnegie Corporation said in announcing this year’s Carnegie Fellowship winners.

Under the fellowship, Gross, an assistant professor in NYU’s Department of History and the university’s Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, will explore the history of Germany’s transition toward renewable energies and its aim of meeting the global challenge of environmental sustainability.

“The health of our democracy depends on an informed citizenry, and our universities, academies, and academic associations play an essential role in replenishing critical information and providing knowledge through scholarship,” said Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York. “The Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program is designed to support scholarship that brings fresh perspectives from the social sciences and humanities to the social, political, and economic problems facing the United States and the world today.”

“It is inspiring to see proposals to carry out exceptionally high-caliber research on an extraordinary range of important topics,” said Susan Hockfield, chair of the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program jury, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and president emerita of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “As a lifelong scientist, I know firsthand what a difference a fellowship can make in developing the potential of a research plan and the continued growth of a scholar, whether the person is well established or relatively new to a field.”

Gross has authored Export Empire: German Soft Power in Southeastern Europe, 1890-1945 (Cambridge, 2016) and is currently researching his second book, German Energy Policy in the Age of Oil and Atoms, 1945–2000. He holds doctoral and masters degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia.

 

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