Call for Applications: Lender Center for Social Justice Faculty Fellowship

All Syracuse University faculty with an interest in social justice are encouraged to apply for the Lender Center for Social Justice 2025-27 Faculty Fellowship.

This is the seventh year the Lender Center has awarded the two-year fellowship for research focused on a contemporary social issue. Faculty fellows work with a team of student research fellows. They receive $5,000 each year and $7,500 each of two summers for research support, plus another $5,000 to help publicize and present findings at the annual Lender Center symposium.

The fellowship is open to all full-time faculty members. Applications are due by Friday, April 11, at 5 p.m. Details about the required materials and submission process are available on the Lender Center website. Questions can be directed to lendercenter@syr.edu.

“We encourage faculty to think of social justice in a broad sense and to develop projects that engage local, regional, national or global topics,” says Kendall Phillips, Lender Center director. “Lender Fellows projects have engaged a wide spectrum of social justice issues. Beyond providing support for research, this program creates a robust community of researchers, and past faculty and student fellows have described their programs as being rich, engaging and transformative experiences.”

Lender Center 2022-24 Faculty Fellow Mona Bhan, left, worked with doctoral students Aren Burnside, center, and ParKer Bryant on projects researching community impacts of artificial intelligence.

Previous Lender Faculty Fellows are:

• Miriam Mutambudzi (2024-26), assistant professor of public health in the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics, who is researching the effects of redlining on employment.
• Nausheen Husain (2023-25), assistant professor of magazine, news and digital journalism in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, who is examining media coverage of Muslim people and communities and the impact of that coverage.
• Mona Bhan (2022-24), associate professor of anthropology and the Ford-Maxwell Professor of South Asian Studies in the Maxwell School, whose research used a cultural anthropology lens to assess how artificial intelligence (AI) weaponry and AI systems can transform the realities of autonomy, accountability, human rights and justice.
• Seyeon Lee (2021-23), associate dean for Research and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility; associate professor of environmental and interior design and Georgia Miller Associate Professor. She and her team studied whether the design and location of a new wellness center building affected whether the center reached its objectives.
• Jonnell Robinson (2020-22), associate professor of geography and the environment in the Maxwell School, who continued the work of Evan Weissman, late associate professor of food studies and nutrition in Falk College, who researched the effectiveness of food systems in Syracuse in meeting community needs, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Casarae Gibson-Abdul-Ghani (2019-21), then an assistant professor of African American studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, who researched the utilization of social media platforms as a way of uncovering social justice trends.