"Although I had completed 18 months of field stay and written up my results, there was an important piece of research that occurred to me in the midst of turning my dissertation into a book manuscript.  The APS Franklin Grant provided me just the resources I needed to return to Pakistan to do additional research.  My book has benefited enormously from this rare opportunity."  Naveeda Khan's manuscript is titled The Promise of Pakistan: Locating Muslim Aspiration, Skepticism and the Ordinary.  Her central claims are that, contrary to standing scholarship, Pakistan had a founding vision of inaugurating Islamic modernity.  Her book attempts to draw out the contours of this aspiration, suggesting how the violence of skepticism and an enduring commitment to ordinary life also arise from this founding desire.  Dr. Khan is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University.  (Franklin Grant)

"The APS/British Academy grant to conduct research in London was tremendously helpful.  I was able to obtain rare and difficult-to-find materials from the Royal Asiatic Society library's collection of Malay materials, and I had a productive summer reading in the East India Company archives at the British Library.  This grant will have a significant impact on the book I'm currently writing."  Su Fang Ng's book, Global Renaissance: Early Modern Empire and Classicism from the British Isles to the Malay Archipelago, examines how Greco-Roman models of empire became part of native histories of early modern island kingdoms in the far west and the far east--the British Isles and island Southeast Asia--and in turn, how these claims to classicism shaped English relations with Southeast Asians in the early modern East Indies spice trade.  Dr. Ng is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma. (Franklin Grant)

"The Lewis and Clark Grant allowed me to travel to Australia to collect and observe a rare and cryptic group of spiders found only there.  I spent six weeks collecting assassin spiders from coastal habitats in the southwest and also in montane areas along the east coast."  Hannah Wood's field work in Australia will contribute to the broader goal of her dissertation research, which is to understand the evolutionary relationships between the living and extinct clades of assassin spiders found throughout the world.  Ms. Wood is a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley.  (Lewis and Clark Grant)

"The APS library fellowship was particularly valuable for two reasons. First, as a busy employed physician coming to study the history of medicine late in my career, I needed the protected, uninterrupted research time away from my practice obligations that the fellowship afforded. Second, I found the APS collection of the papers of the major human geneticists of the 20th century ideal for providing exactly the material I needed to supplement and enhance what I had found in Minnesota."  Neal Holtan's project, Eugenics, Human Genetics, and Public Health Genetics in Mid-Twentieth Century Minnesota,  is the subject of his Ph.D. dissertation in the University of Minnesota's Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine.  The dissertation will describe the Minnesota Eugenics Society (1926-1938), the Dight Institute for Human Genetics at the University of Minnesota (1941-1986), the Minnesota Human Genetics League (1945-1993), and the Human Genetics Unit at the Minnesota Department of Health (1959-present), the first genetics unit in a state health department in the United States. (Library Fellowship)

"The APS grant allowed me to do intensive on-site research in a region of Brazil where I had collected seemingly similar stories in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  In the process I was able to observe processes of change firsthand."  Candace Slater's project, Unpopular Cultures: Rethinking  "Popular Culture" in 21st-Century Latin America, investigages transformations in a series of folk and popular narratives that reflect and contribute toward larger social, economic, and environmental changes within northeast Brazil in particular and Latin America as a whole.  Dr. Slater is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Director of the Luso-Brazilian Program at the University of California, Berkeley. (Franklin Grant)

"The Library Resident Research Fellowship provided me the opportunity to begin my dissertation research in an ideal atmosphere.  Besides its rich collections, the APS offers a most welcoming environment, fostered by an attentive, friendly staff that is eager to help researchers."  Daniel Wasserman, a doctoral candidate at the University of Virginia, is completing his dissertation, Translating the Words of God: Evangelization and Language Policy in the Spanish World, examining the question of which languages missionaries could use in teaching Catholicism to the many different peoples who inhabited the 16th-century Spanish Empire.

"The Lewis and Clark Grant for Exploration and Field Research provided funding at an early yet critical phase of my research. I was not only able to collect much-needed data but also to lay the foundation for future field research for my project."  Hadas Kushnir's Lewis & Clark Grant enabled her to travel to Tanzania for field work on a project titled Human-lion conflict in southeastern Tanzania: An analysis of causes to develop solutions. "Preventing and mitigating lion attacks will not only save human lives, but will also save lions," writes Hadas, a doctoral candidate at the University of Minnesota.  Above, Hadas stands at the location of a lion attack taking a GPS point and recording context information with help from the village chairman.