Faculty research projects include a biography of Kasturba Gandhi (1869–1944) based on new archival research; an exploration of the work of children’s book author Maurice Sendak; an investigation into the role of a particular group of neurons in appetite suppression; and a study looking at how advocates help new arrivals resettle in the Berkshires.
Here are brief descriptions of the faculty projects supported by recently awarded grants:
Matt Carter, associate professor of biology, has been awarded a three-year, $427,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health. The grant will support Carter’s investigation into the role of a relatively unexplored population of neurons in the parasubthalamic nucleus (PSTN) in appetite suppression.
Aparna Kapadia, associate professor of history, has been awarded an $85,000 fellowship for 2025-26 from the New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. At the Cullman Center, Kapadia will work on a biography of Kasturba Gandhi (1869–1944) that, based on new archival research, examines her life and activism within the broader context of women’s leadership in India’s anticolonial movement.
Phi Su, assistant professor of sociology, has received a $35,000 Pipeline Grant from the Russell Sage Foundation—Gates Foundation. With this grant, Su will explore how advocates help new arrivals resettle in the Berkshires, a rural county in Massachusetts, which has not historically received large numbers of migrants.
Janneke van de Stadt, the Joseph L. Rice III 1954 Professor of Russian, has been awarded a 2025 Whiting Fellowship that she will use to support her research on children’s book author Maurice Sendak’s illustrated version of Leo Tolstoy’s Nikolenka’s Childhood. Her research will, in turn, strengthen her literature courses in comparative literature and Russian.
Published May 20, 2025