Awards & More

Amy Williams, a composer, new-music pianist, and Pitt associate professor of music, has been named a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow. 

She will spend her fellowship year composing three pieces, recording a second album, and collaborating with Pitt Assistant Professor of Studio Arts Aaron Henderson in a project called Cineshape—a series of her chamber music pieces inspired by films. Williams was one of 175 scholars, artists, and scientists selected for the fellowship this year. 

PhD candidate in communications, Martin Marinos, and PhD candidate in philosophy, Robert Steel, were awarded 2014-15 Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Dissertation Completion Fellowships, in a competition for advanced graduate students in the humanities, in their final year of dissertation writing. The awards include a $30,000 stipend plus up to $8,000 for research and university fees. Marinos and Steel are two of 70 fellows selected from a pool of nearly 1,000 applicants, through a rigorous, multistage peer review process. Marinos’ communications thesis is titled, “Post-Socialism, Right-Wing Populism, and the Construction of a (Neo)liberal Media Sphere: Political Discourse and Social Change in Bulgaria.” Steel’s Philosophy thesis is titled, “Planning for Failure.”