Championing the Humanities in Uncertain Times

At a time when many scholars face narrowing opportunities in the humanities, The Huntington upholds a long-standing commitment to its community of research fellows and their work. For the 2025–26 academic year, The Huntington will host more than 150 visitors from around the globe as part of its renowned fellowship program.

The new cohort includes long-term fellows in residence for the full academic year, academic-term fellows, short-term researchers (in residence for one to three months), and international recipients of travel and exchange fellowships. These fellowships—awarded through a rigorous peer-review process—represent an institutional investment of roughly $1.8 million in the future of humanities research.

“Supporting humanities scholars is central to The Huntington’s research mission,” said Karen R. Lawrence, president of The Huntington. “Here, scholars find the time, space, and resources to pursue ambitious questions across disciplines. The work that begins here continues to shape conversations in classrooms, publications, and public discourse for years to come.”

Expanding Access and Infrastructure

In recent years, The Huntington has broadened access to its fellowship program as part of a strategic effort to welcome new scholars and support emerging areas of research. This initiative, guided by the institution’s Strategic Plan, includes expanded eligibility and new fellowship formats. Short-term awards are now open to independent scholars and graduate students in nondoctoral programs. A new “academic-term” fellowship, introduced this year, supports faculty from teaching-intensive institutions who may not be able to commit to a full year of residency. Two of these term fellows will be in residence during the 2025–26 academic year.

“We’re proud to support scholars, especially at this moment, when opportunities are shrinking elsewhere,” said Susan Juster, the W.M. Keck Foundation Director of Research at The Huntington. “These fellows are not just advancing scholarship; they’re also helping to reshape our understanding of the world. That’s why supporting them now is more important than ever.”

In addition to expanding fellowship categories, The Huntington has announced Scholars Grove—a forthcoming residential complex designed to offer reasonably priced housing and community space for fellows. The development underscores The Huntington’s long-term commitment to investing in individual researchers and to strengthening the broader ecosystem of humanities scholarship.

The following spotlights just two of the more than 150 fellows whose research reflects the breadth and impact of the program. See the full list of 2025–26 Huntington fellows.

Tattoos, Power, and Identity in the Global Middle Ages

One of this year’s academic-term fellows, Esther Liberman Cuenca, assistant professor of history at the University of Houston–Victoria, will be working on her second book, Body Art and Tattooing Customs in the Global Middle Ages (under contract with Cambridge University Press).

Cuenca notes that scholarly literature on premodern tattooing has focused narrowly on practices from certain regions, such as Song-dynasty China, the Spanish-occupied Philippines, and medieval Islamic culture, without providing a comparative perspective. She argues that premodern Europe is critically understudied in relation to tattooing, despite references to the practice in chronicles, theological works, legal codices, and writings about the lives of saints.

“There’s a myth that Europeans discovered tattooing only after sailors brought it back from the South Pacific in the 18th century,” Cuenca said. “But the evidence shows tattooing was known and practiced in Europe much earlier. My work uncovers how these practices were written about—and misunderstood—through colonial and religious lenses.”

Cuenca will explore The Huntington’s early English books and archival materials on Spanish colonization to investigate medieval and early modern views of body art—what she terms “ethnographies of skin.” Her sources also include more technical studies, such as Edmund Bolton’s 17th-century meditation on armor and Richard Saunders’ medical treatise on dermatology.

For Cuenca, the project also repositions tattooing as a tool of power and cultural differentiation. “Tattoos weren’t just decorative—they marked boundaries between colonizer and colonized,” she said. “They reveal a long and deep history of global colonialism, inscribed on skin.”

Poetry, Climate, and Indigenous Knowledge in the Pacific Islands

One of the full-year, distinguished fellows is Craig Santos Perez, an award-winning poet and adjunct faculty member at MiraCosta College in Oceanside, California. During his residence, he will be writing his monograph Pacific Islander Ecopoetry: Indigenous Knowledge, Environmental Justice, and Climate Change (University of Arizona Press).

Perez’s research explores how Pacific Islanders have used poetry to reclaim traditional ecological knowledge and create symbolic spaces of mourning, healing, and empowerment. The project provides insight into the relationship between Pacific Islander culture and the environment.

Perez will examine 19th- and early 20th-century maps of the Pacific islands and ocean in The Huntington’s Rare Book Maps collection, contemporary Pacific Islander poetry (1970 to 2020) from Pacific islands with political ties to the United States (Hawaiʻi, Guam, American Sāmoa, and the Marshall Islands), and materials in the Pacific Rim collection, such as those related to Queen Liliʻuokalani and 19th-century missionaries in Hawaiʻi, written by Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) authors.

“Pacific Islander cultures assert that humans, nature, and other species are interconnected,” Perez said. “Land and water are central elements of Indigenous identity and genealogy. The earth is considered a sacred ancestor that should be treated with respect and reverence.”

Perez’s work charts how these Indigenous beliefs and ethics were displaced during an era of global imperialism beginning in the 16th century, as many Pacific islands were colonized and transformed into plantations, military bases, nuclear testing grounds, mines, and tourist destinations.

“There is an activist dimension to Pacific Islander ecopoetry because it has the power to develop environmental literacy as well as inspire empathy and positive change,” Perez said.

A Hub for Groundbreaking Scholarship 

Each year, research conducted at The Huntington results in books, articles, exhibitions, documentaries, and educational resources used in classrooms across the country. The institution also disseminates scholarship through academic conferences, workshops, seminars, and public lectures.

This fall and next spring, seven distinguished fellows will deliver lectures in The Huntington’s Rothenberg Hall:

• Oct. 15, 2025: Catherine Ceniza Choy (University of California, Berkeley)
• Dec. 10, 2025: Craig Santos Perez (MiraCosta College)
• Feb. 4, 2026: Helen Thompson (University of Cambridge)
• March 11, 2026: Sandy Rodriguez (artist and independent educator)
• March 18, 2026: Joshua Piker (William & Mary)
• April 29, 2026: Karen Harvey (University of Birmingham)
• May 6, 2026: Willy Bauer (University of California College of the Law, San Francisco)

The public is encouraged to attend these lectures and hear the scholars speak about their original research.