Philippe Bourgois Awarded Collaborative Research Fellowship from American Council of Learned Societies

Philippe Bourgois, the Richard Perry University Professor of Anthropology and Family and Community Medicine, has received a 2013 Collaborative Research Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).

The ACLS selects teams of scholars who cross disciplinary, methodological, and geographical boundaries to undertake new research projects that will result in joint publications. Made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the program aims to demonstrate the creative potential of collaborative research in the humanities and related social sciences.

Bourgois, who holds appointments in the School of Arts and Sciences and the Perelman School of Medicine, will work with Laurie Hart of Haverford College to “track the experiences of vulnerable inner-city residents in a violently policed neighborhood of Philadelphia.” They will co-author Cornered, a photo-ethnographic book that documents the effects of 21st century poverty and hyper-incarceration in the post-industrial inner city. Theirs is one of only seven teams selected for the fellowship.

“The 2013 ACLS Collaborative Research fellows come from a range of humanities fields but, more importantly, they represent collaborations across all faculty ranks and stages of the academic career,” noted ACLS Director of Fellowship Programs Nicole Stahlmann. “The continuous diversification of the applicant pool over the past five years of the program suggests that collaborative research is gaining traction among both tenured and untenured scholars.”

Bourgois was also recently named a 2013 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow. He is the author of several books, including In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio and Righteous Dopefiend (co-authored with Jeff Schonberg), which became a photo-ethnographic exhibit at the Penn Museum in 2009.

ACLS, a private, nonprofit federation of 71 national scholarly organizations, is the preeminent representative of American scholarship in the humanities and related social sciences, and works to advance scholarship by awarding fellowships and strengthening relations among learned societies.