UAB professor and author makes history as the first recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship from UAB and the state of Alabama. Photo credit: Ian CuracioSarah Parcak, Ph.D., professor in the College of Arts and Sciences Department of Anthropology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has been awarded a fellowship through the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. She will use the award to work on her third book, “Surviving Collapse: A Global History of Human Resilience.”
The Foundation awarded the fellowship to a diverse group of 175 writers, scholars, artists and scientists. Guggenheim fellowships are intended for individuals who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.
The Foundation receives approximately 3,000 applications each year. This is the first time someone from UAB and the state of Alabama has received the fellowship.
“This award is an extraordinary and humbling honor, and in a time when we face so much uncertainty, having the opportunity to write about the history of our resilience gives me unexpected hope,” Parcak said.
Since its establishment in 1925, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has granted more than $375 million in fellowships to more than 18,000 individuals, among whom are scores of Nobel laureates, Fields Medalists, poets laureate, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize and National Book Award, and other internationally recognized honors.
Parcak is an archaeologist and Egyptologist and has worked on excavations across the globe since 1999. She is the author of “Satellite Remote Sensing for Archaeology” and “Archaeology from Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past.”
In 2016, Parcak was the recipient of the Smithsonian magazine’s American Ingenuity Award and the $1 million TED prize. She serves as the founder and president of Globalxplorer, a nonprofit dedicated to using cutting-edge technologies to protect and preserve cultural heritage. Parcak co-directs the Joint Mission with Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities, which focuses on the excavation and survey of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom capital.