Chicago writers Ling Ma and Ebony G. Patterson among recipients of 2024 MacArthur ‘genius grants’

WASHINGTON — The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation on Tuesday announced its 2024 class of fellows, commonly known as “genius grant” recipients.

The 22 fellows will each receive an $800,000 grant that they can spend as they wish over five years. They were selected from nominations in a years-long process that solicited input from their communities and peers. Members do not apply and are never formally notified that they have been nominated unless they are selected for the award.

Marlies Carruth, director of the MacArthur Fellows Program, said the interdisciplinary award aims to “capitalize” on individuals with a track record and the potential to produce outstanding work.

The 2024 scholarship recipients are:

Loka Ashwood, 39, Lexington, Kentucky, sociologist at the University of Kentucky, studies how environmental issues, corporate and government policies intersect to harm rural communities and reduce their trust in democracy.

Ruha Benjamin, 46, Princeton, New Jersey, is an interdisciplinary scholar and writer at Princeton University. It explores how new technologies and medical research often reinforce social and racial inequality and prejudice.

Justin Vivian Bond, 61, New York, is a performer and performer who advocated for civil rights, offered solace and humor to members of the gay community, and inspired other transgender artists during his long career as a cabaret singer.

Jericho Brown, 48, Atlanta, a poet from Emory University; His lyrical work explores contemporary culture in part through vulnerable personal reflection and experimentation with form.

Tony Cokes, 68, of Providence, Rhode Island, is a media artist from Brown University. In his video works, he often uses texts and fragments from contemporary culture to convey social critique, including police brutality and torture.

Nicola Dell, 42, a computer and information scientist at Cornell Tech in New York, has researched how technology can be used for intimate partner abuse and developed tools and programs to help survivors of such abuse.

Johnny Gandelsman, 46, New Paltz, New York, is a violinist and producer who revisits classical works using different styles and techniques, while also celebrating the works of contemporary composers.

Sterling Harjo, 44, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, is a filmmaker whose work, including the television series he co-created “Reservation Dogs,” is based on the daily lives of Native American communities.

Juan Felipe Herrera, 75, Fresno, California, is a poet, educator, and writer dedicated to expressing the shared experiences of the Mexican-American community through often bilingual works that transcend genres and draw on both contemporary events and the cultures of precolonial societies.

Ling Ma, 41, Chicago, is a fiction writer whose often surreal or speculative stories draw from and illuminate contemporary experiences of alienation, migration, and materialism.

Jennifer L. Morgan, 58, New York, historian at New York University. Her work focuses on enslaved African women and reveals how the wealth of slave owners and the growth of the economy were built on their exploitation and reproductive labor.

Martha Muñoz, 39, New Haven, Connecticut, evolutionary biologist at Yale University. His research investigates what factors drive the rates and patterns of evolution.

Shaikaja Paik, 50, Cincinnati, historian of modern India at the University of Cincinnati. Her work explores caste discrimination and its intersection with gender and sexuality in the lives of Dalit women.

Joseph Parker, 44, Pasadena, Calif., is an evolutionary biologist at the California Institute of Technology who studies wandering insects and the evolutionary origins of their symbiotic relationships with other species.

Ebony G. Patterson, 43, of Kingston, Jamaica and Chicago, is a multimedia artist who creates complex, layered, immersive works using a wide range of materials to explore social histories, sometimes juxtaposing vivid landscapes with objects of mourning.

Shamel Pitts, 39, Brooklyn, New York, is a dancer and choreographer whose collaborative work with TRIBE, the artist group she founded, imagines a future free of oppression, especially for members of the African diaspora.

Wendy Red Star, 43, Portland, Oregon, is a visual artist who uses archival materials to challenge colonial narratives and center the perspective of Native Americans.

Jason Reynolds, 40, Washington, D.C., is a children’s and young adult author whose genre-bending books often reflect the experiences of Black children, and as a former National Ambassador for Youth Literature, he encourages children to tell their own stories.

Dorothy Roberts, 68, Philadelphia, legal scholar and public policy researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. Explores racial disparities in child welfare systems and healthcare systems; This system especially prevents black women from having a say over their bodies.

Keivan G. Stassun, 52, a science educator and astronomer at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, has supported the recruitment of science students from diverse backgrounds, including neurodiverse students, in addition to his research on stellar evolution.

Benjamin Van Mooy, 52, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, is an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who studies plankton and the critical role they play in sustaining marine life.

Alice Wong, 50 San Francisco, writer, editor and disability justice activist, founded the Disability Visibility Project in 2014, among other campaigns, to bring attention to the experiences of people with disabilities and the discrimination and barriers they face.