Professor Héctor Carrillo wins Guggenheim and ACLS fellowships
The awards will enable Carrillo to advance his research on the rise of amateur genealogy
By Rebecca Lindell
Héctor Carrillo, a professor of sociology and gender and sexuality studies, has been awarded two prestigious fellowships: one from the Guggenheim Foundation and another from the American Council of Learned Societies.
The awards will enable Carrillo to advance his research on his project, “The Afterlife of Documents: Identity, Mobility, and the Genealogical Imagination.”
“I am truly happy and profoundly thankful to be selected for these two prestigious fellowships,” Carrillo said. “They reinvigorate me and strengthen my resolve to continue my research, even during the difficult time that we are living through.”
Carrillo’s current research explores the appeal of amateur genealogy as a global phenomenon. He investigates the social and economic processes that make documents and records readily accessible to amateur genealogists the world over, as well as the social implications of the proliferation of genealogy as a global phenomenon.
A timely award
“The fact that I’m studying the sociotechnical aspects of amateur genealogy and the interactions of genealogists with the documents and records that they access seems especially significant right now,” Carrillo said. “This is a time when reflecting on family, together and apart, and forging links with our forebears acquire relevance for many of us as we think about our past and present and imagine our futures.”
Guggenheim Fellowships are awarded to individuals who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. About 3,000 scholars apply for the fellowship each year; roughly 175 are awarded.
The ACLS Fellowship program honors scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who have the potential to make significant contributions to knowledge in their fields. Carrillo is among 81 awardees selected from among nearly 1,200 applicants.
Carrillo is the author of two award-winning books: The Night Is Young: Sexuality in Mexico in the Time of AIDS (University of Chicago Press, 2002) and Pathways of Desire: The Sexual Migration of Mexican Gay Men (University of Chicago Press, 2017). His second book earned him awards from three separate American Sociological Association (ASA) sections and has been selected to receive the 2020 ASA Distinguished Scholarly Book Award.
In addition to his teaching and research, Carrillo co-directs the Sexualities Project at Northwestern (SPAN), which promotes interdisciplinary research and education on sexuality. He is also a past chair of the Sociology of Sexualities Section of the ASA and serves as a senior editor of Theory and Society.
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