"The Franklin Research Grant was crucial in making my research trip to Belgium possible.  Without it, I would never have had the opportunity to expand my research on the mulatto children, and to finish an article (Interracial Unions, Mixed Identities: Mulatto Children in the Belgian Congo, 1890-1960) that is currently being considered for publication."   Dr. Tshimanga-Kashama, a member of the history department at the University of Nevada, Reno, focuses his research on a significant but relatively unstudied aspect of colonial history, that of Afro-European children in the Belgian Congo and their impact on discourses of race, identity, gender, and colonialism.  (Franklin Grant)

“The Franklin Research Grant has enabled us to use sophisticated, computer-assisted methods to reconstruct most of the missing parts of this significant human fossil from Hofmeyr. This new information will enable us to shed additional light on the timing and appearance of modern humans at the beginning of the Later Stone Age in Africa.”  Frederick E. Grine’s project, Stereolithographic Reconstruction and 3-D Radiographic Analysis of a Late Pleistocene Human Skull from South Africa, which was published in Science in 2007, was recognized by Time magazine as one of the top ten science stories for that year.  According to Dr. Grine, Professor of Anthropology and Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University (SUNY), a nearly complete human cranium was discovered some 50 years ago in a dry river channel near the town of Hofmeyr, South Africa. This specimen has been dated to approximately 36,000 years before present, a significant finding in view of the lack of human fossils from the Late Pleistocene of sub-Saharan Africa, the time when, and place where, the modern humans who migrated out to inhabit the rest of the world first appeared. The Hofmeyr cranium had been seriously damaged since its discovery, with large portions of the face and braincase missing.  Study of the fossil, insofar as it is preserved, revealed intriguingly close affinities to penecontemporaneous crania from the Upper Palaeolithic of Eurasia.

"The APS Franklin Grant made all the difference in the amount of time I was able to spend on-site in Pompeii, and subsequently how well I came to understand the archaeological evidence. Instead of a few days and a cursory check of the archaeological material, I could spend weeks and work my way through the taverns, houses, and public buildings where people left their mark, wrote about their travels, and proclaimed their civic pride. I even discovered inscriptions that had never been published." Rebecca Benefiel's project, Pompeii and her Neighbors: Ancient Graffiti and Regional Interaction, examined graffiti as a window onto the dynamic social interactions and economic networks among inhabitants of different communities across the populous region of Campania.  Dr. Benefiel is an Assistant Professor of Classics at Washington and Lee University.  (Franklin Grant)

"I have been triply blessed by the APS.  The Library's print and manuscript collections, managed by extraordinarily talented librarians, were essential to my research.  A Sabbatical Fellowship provided time to write without interruption.  And the intellectual community created by the Society helped attune me to the goals and purposes of scholarly life." Alan Houston, Professor of Political Science at UC San Diego, was a recent recipient of both a Sabbatical Fellowship and a Library Resident Research Fellowship from the APS.  Dr. Houston's research focuses on the development of liberal, democratic, and republican ideas in early-modern Europe and America.  His most recent book, supported in part by his APS grants, is Benjamin Franklin and the Politics of Improvement (Yale, 2008).  His most dramatic archival discovery--nearly 50 previously unknown Franklin letters that lay hidden in the British Library--was published in the William and Mary Quarterly in April 2009.