2026 Salomon Awardees
2026 Salomon Awardees
In 2026, Brown University's Division of Research awarded 17 Richard B. Salomon Faculty Research Awards for projects deemed to be of exceptional merit.
Arts & Humanities
Poetry Jamaica Voiced
A Production of the Poet Laureate of Jamaica in Association with The Caribbean Poetry Book Series, Calabash. Inspired by the Poetry Hour @ The British Library: https://thepoetryhour.com/. With five sessions each year forming a season, Poetry Jamaica Voiced will celebrate the poetry of Jamaican poets who have passed and will be built on the principle that poetry read out-loud is one of the most important ways with which we may apprehend and appreciate the art. Carefully curated and produced readings will offer a rich overview of the work of past Jamaican poets and introduce some of our great poetry to the world. These readings, which will be produced in Jamaica and at Brown University will be professionally recorded and preserved for archival purposes, for live broadcast and for continued access to the public through a dedicated website, as well as a YouTube channel and other streaming mechanisms.
"High Performance" as Archive and Method: Curatorial Research, Transregional Exchange, and the History of Performance Art
This project supports curatorial research and scholarly writing undertaken in conjunction with “High Performance: A Two-Year Conference,” a multi-institutional initiative examining the legacy of High Performance, the first international magazine devoted exclusively to performance art (1978–1997). Long understood as a Los Angeles–based publication, High Performance functioned in practice as a transregional and international intellectual network linking artists, critics, and scholars across North America, Europe, and beyond. This project asks how revisiting the magazine’s archive can illuminate contemporary performance practices shaped by questions of embodiment, ritual, temporality, and the politics of form. My research focuses on the East Coast and international dimensions of High Performance’s legacy, combining archival study, curatorial research, and scholarly writing. Supported by this award, I will conduct research in institutional and artist archives; organize a series of research-driven convenings and salons at universities, museums, and performance spaces in the Northeast and abroad; and develop a two-day symposium at Brown University that brings artists, scholars, and critics into dialogue with the magazine’s historical materials. These events will pair archival inquiry with live performance and critical discussion, foregrounding performance art as at once a field of historical research of interest to several disciplines (including performance studies, art history, and cultural/intellectual history) and a living artistic practice. The primary scholarly outcome of the project will be a long-form curatorial essay, envisioned as a standalone publication or short book, that will reconsider High Performance from the vantage of the present.
A Night at The Box: Preserving San Francisco Queer Nightlife History, 1987-1998
In 1987 Page Hodel, a San Francisco-based community organizer and DJ, had an idea. At the time, the queer nightlife landscape in San Francisco was largely segregated along gender and racial lines. Gay men went to their bars and clubs, lesbians to theirs, and most queer spaces still catered to white audiences. In an effort to address this segregation, in 1987 Page launched The Box, a popular queer dance club that played the freshest funk, soul, hip house and r&b music and catered to a mixed queer crowd. From 1987-1998 the filmmaker Aarin Burch added visual choreography to the dance floor by using experimental film techniques to create live visuals at The Box that were in deep synergy with the music and dancing, highlighting the links between experimental video and club culture. Burch recorded nearly every night at The Box, documenting the space, the music, the attitude, as well as club goers and their reflections of The Box. But this archival footage has been sitting in storage since the ‘90s, and because magnetic tape is fragile and degrades over time, a precious queer community archive is at risk of being unrecoverable for future generations to see how queer people lived. “A Night at The Box: Preserving San Francisco Queer Nightlife History, 1987-1998” will support the digital transfer of approximately 450 tapes of VHS, Video 8, Hi8 and DVcam archival material covering hours of footage from The Box. This collaborative archive project aims to support a local community of artists and organizers preserve an important moment in Bay Area queer nightlife history so it can be accessible to future generations of community members, researchers, scholars and artists.
Third-Worldist Poetics: Palestine, Cuba, Algeria
In 1964, the Palestinian writer Mahmoud Darwish published a collection of poetry titled Awraq al-Zaytun (Olive Leaves), which included poems in praise of the Algerian and Cuban Revolutions. Nine years earlier, the final communiqué of the Bandung Conference had determined that forging cultural connections between far-flung colonized nations was fundamental to the task of decolonization. Over the next two decades, “cultural cooperation” became a project that united intellectuals across the “Third World.” Third-Worldist Poetics: Palestine, Cuba, Algeria lays out the political and literary landscape in which these nations became linked literary communities from the 1950s to the 1970s. Drawing on sources in Arabic, Spanish, and French, the book offers a transnational understanding of the Third-Worldist literary field with a focus on the literary and diplomatic labors of an understudied generation of poets. This shift in focus is important because although poets were the primary agents of cultural cooperation during the age of decolonization, they have seldom been treated as such. For this reason, the book is also a work of comparative poetics: a study of the genres and styles that index a history of politico-aesthetic preoccupations and cultural encounters––direct and imaginary—between Palestinian, Cuban, and Algerian poets. The book’s methodological axes attest to my commitment to making Comparative Literature the home for South-South comparison and adding theoretical production from the Global South to the field's dominant frameworks.
She Flickered In and Out of History
She Flickered In and Out of History is a multi-year creative research project that examines the geological, mythological, and political temporalities of the Mediterranean through the emergence of a volcanic island between Tunisia and Sicily in 1831, which provoked competing imperial claims before disappearing beneath the sea within five months. The island remains approximately eight meters below the surface; in its submerged state, it resists territorial claims. By attending to the illuminatory potential of this submerged island, the project considers alternative ways of conceptualizing sovereignty, borders, and colonial and environmental histories. The film component has been completed with external production support and is scheduled to premiere internationally in Spring 2026. Salomon support will enable completion of a scholarly monograph consolidating extensive archival and geological research across Tunisia, Sicily, and Malta. Structured as a critical visual essay integrating archival documents, geological records, cinematic stills, multilingual lyrical compositions (Sicilian, Tunisian Arabic, and Mediterranean Lingua Franca), and invited scholarly contributions, the publication advances creative practice as a mode of humanistic inquiry. By proposing an unstable terraqueous imaginary in which land and sea are politically entangled, the project develops alternative frameworks for conceptualizing territory, memory, and belonging outside imperial logics. As the second installment in an ongoing research trilogy, the book establishes a platform for interdisciplinary scholarship connecting visual culture, critical geography, and environmental humanities. The project contributes to Brown University’s interdisciplinary humanities research by advancing scholarship that bridges creative practice and theoretical inquiry.
Alhaydrulujya (The Hydrology)
The Sahara Desert is now, owing to climate change, expanding at the rate of 12,000 kilometers per year. This ecological shift has profound implications for desert culture, as Saharan nomads alter and curtail their routes of transit to follow water sources, and the first prong of my proposal–my novel-in-progress, Alhaydrulujya (The Hydrology)–is a chronicling of the migration of those who've fled the Sahara for its Moroccan border. The second prong of my project assists artists in the southern part of the kingdom in creating an annual gathering akin to the Mousseum de Tan Tan.
Social Sciences
A multimedia community-driven dictionary of A’ingae
This project builds on a dictionary database created by the A’ingae LanguageDocumentation Project by adding (i) high quality audio recordings of words and example sentences, and (ii) digital illustrations to accompany words of particular cultural importance, including terms relating to the natural environment of the A’i territory and A’i traditional ecological knowledge. A’ingae is an indigenous language of Ecuador and Colombia, spoken by ~1,500 people with a traditional territory spanning the interface of the Ecuadorian cloud forest and Amazonian rainforest. A dictionary brings together information about the various grammatical systems of a language with culturally specific information about the words of the language and the concepts they encode. In a practical sense, a dictionary serves a vital role for educators and other community members invested in the vitality of a language and its maintenance or revitalization across diverse contexts as well as a crucial resource for researchers across all fields engaging with the A’i communities. The addition of audio and digital illustrations made by native speakers will add a new dimension to the resulting dictionary (in both printed and digital formats), enhancing its usefulness for future research and for K-12 teachers and other stakeholders in A’i communities. Beyond adding new dimensions to the dictionary itself, the project will have broader impacts through a series of capacity-building workshops for A’i participants and training opportunities for Brown undergraduates.
Between Two Singapores: Unsettling Settler Romances and the Labor of Imagination in Western Michigan and Southeast Asia
“Between Two Singapores” approaches imagination as both a form of communicative action and a real, material force in the world. It examines how individuals, groups, and institutional agents use language and creative media to articulate their feelings of love, attachment, and desire for a place they can never go: the ghost town of Singapore, Michigan, which lies buried beneath the dunes on Western Michigan’s lakefront. Through participant observation, archival research, and ethnographic interviews, I will analyze how different social actors draw on—but also challenge or transform—existing tropes, genres, and modes of collective action to imagine new futures centered on the buried town. While anthropologists often approach imagination as either a vehicle for mystification, a form of mere play, or a resource for liberatory action, my research bridges all three by examining the liberatory and oppressive effects that imagination generates. I will do this by tracking the romances that reproduce unsettling—disturbing—colonial structures of property and racial capitalism, as well as those that unsettle—destabilize or disrupt—such structures.
Njavara: Indigenous Knowledge, Standardization, and Resilience
Njavara is a charismatic Indigenous variety of rice that grows in the wetlands of Kerala, the southwestern-most state of India. Famed for its nutty fragrance and deep red hue, Njavara is not grown for food but for its role in the traditional medicine of Ayurveda where it is used in the treatment of arthritis, skin diseases and neurological conditions. The history of Njavara collides with that of large-scale changes in agriculture in India and provides a counter-narrative to the mythology of ubiquitous success enjoyed by the green revolution. While almost all farmers in Kerala were lured by the higher yields promised by the varieties introduced under auspices of the green revolution, certain varieties of rice were grown for their use in religious ceremonies, others were valued for their role in Ayurvedic (the traditional medicine of Kerala) therapeutic treatments, and some varieties were famed for their terroir, their connection to certain places and peoples. This project charts how the rice variety Njavara which had been grown for its medicinal uses for centuries, now on the brink of extinction, still provides hope to rice breeders because of the qualities (other than yield) for which it has been valued. By paying attention to the producers all along the supply chain of Njavara, this project reveals an alternative to industrial farming and extraction that has shown resilience against the strongest forces of change.
Building Better Brains: (Un/)Desirable Futures, Disability and the Development of Neurotechnologies
Neurotechnologies aim to interface computationally and directly with the human brain in ways their proponents believe could transform human life and society. Initial applications of these technologies are focused on experiences of disability and medical conditions, such as managing the tremors of Parkinson's disease or restoring motor function to people with quadriplegia. Against the backdrop of these initial applications, developers and investors continue toward envisioning devices that enhance the cognitive capacities of everyone. “Building Better Brains” attends to the politics, practices and processes that shape the ways in which neurotechnologies are not merely engineered to solve discrete clinical problems but are co-produced alongside sociotechnical imaginaries of the good life (i.e., collectively held, and often institutionally stabilized visions of what a desirable human existence looks like and which everyday capacities it requires). Crucially, these imaginaries of the good life as made possible through technological advances are constituted through disability. Definitions of a function worth recovering or a previous life worth restoring are frequently developed against implicit norms of the able bodymind, wherein disability operates as the negative space against which the good life is engineered. This collaborative project attends to the ways in which disabled people are not incidental to the development of various kinds of neurotechnologies but are instead constitutive of its market. It focuses on how imaginaries of the good life and market logic are co-produced at the frontiers of technological advances to examine what visions of the future are considered – and produced as – desirable.
Subterranean Awakening: Historical Consciousness and Multispecies Habitability in Times of Earthquakes (1897-1950)
This proposal paves new directions in the study of earthquake resilient ecologies by generating productive conversations between the fields of environmental history, architecture, and Indigenous studies. Conventionally, architecture as a field has taken leadership in defining what amounts to innovation and resilience in our times. Yet human-nonhuman communities across the world have been creatively designing their ecologies and coping with disasters for a long time. In the northeastern tracts of British India and postcolonial India, Indigenous infrastructures of habitability have enabled a more-than-human world to endure a quaking earth. Located at the collision point of the Eurasian plate and the Indian plate, the northeastern tracts are one of the most seismically active tracts of the world. Having endured earthquakes of 8.2 in 1897 and 8.6 in 1950, the region has earthquake-informed epistemologies and infrastructures
that point towards alternative ways of reading disasters and their aftermaths. Moving beyond “technocratic” notions of earthquakes, the proposal underlines how the region’s Indigenous communities and more-than-human actors have woven the colonial state and the earthly underground into a reciprocal relationship of accountability—a natureculture consciousness—that takes the form of “subterranean awakening.” This proposal involves archival and ethnographic research in the northeastern tracts of India. It will contribute to the development of my second book project.
Physical Sciences
Designing and probing light-Induced quantum phases in 2D heterostructure: toward the supersolid phase of excitons
Quantum phase transitions have become a major focus in modern physical sciences, forming a cornerstone for advancements in quantum information science and technology. Two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) heterostructures provide an ideal platform for realizing quantum phases of matter due to their reduced dielectric screening and their intrinsically low particle kinetic energy. Despite significant progress in creating ordered electron systems in 2D TMDC semiconductors, including groundbreaking discoveries of 2D correlated insulators and superconductivity, there have been no observations of the supersolid phase, a fundamental phase of bosonic particles that combines the properties of superfluids and crystals. The Principal Investigator (PI) proposes a new approach to realizing the supersolid phase of bosonic excitons in highly hybridized and coupled multilayer TMDC heterostructures, utilizing an external light field. The Bai Lab’s expertise in 2D quantum device fabrication and cryogenic optical spectroscopy/microscopy will uniquely enable the implementation of this project. Notably, accessing multiple quantum phases of matter through electromagnetic fields is a critical goal in the rapidly advancing field of quantum information science. Since excitons are formed through optical excitations in this approach, the proposed research will establish a foundation for light-induced formation and control of fundamental quantum phases in solid-state materials. This will, in turn, significantly strengthen Brown’s position in quantum materials research.
Generating essential pilot data for external grant proposals using the new UPLC-Orbitrap mass spectrometer
The main objective of the proposed work is to generate pilot data using our newly acquired UPLC-orbitrap mass spectrometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific Exploris 240) prior to submitting full-scale NSF and NASA grants. The new instrument is funded by the 2025 NSF MRI grant ($857k, Yongsong Huang is the lead PI). The PI has planned four new grant submissions using the new and unique capabilities of the new instrument. However, critical pilot data are needed. Because the new instrument represents state-of-the-art for the proposed organic and isotope measurements and currently there is no published data, all four proposals would require demonstration of feasibility by analyzing selected samples and/or standards.
Fingerlike protrusions in bacterial swarm front caused by fracture mechanics
The Salomon Research Award is for a study on fingerlike protrusions in bacterial swarm front. The goal of the study is twofold: to identify and quantitatively assess cracks and fingerlike protrusions that occur and develop at the swarm edge of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a human pathogen, in its spread over agar surface; and to interpret experimental findings based on applying theories in fracture mechanics. The work builds upon the extensive experience of Professor Tang with experimental studies on bacterial growth, spread, and motility, in consultation with Professor Kesari, an expert on solid mechanics. The outcome of the initial effort is to generate the first publication on the findings, and a fully developed proposal to seek funding by NSF CMMI under the biomechanics and mechanobiology program (BMMB). The long-term outcome is a generalizable model on bacterial expansion mechanics with biomedical applications.
Public Health
Finding interpretability in genetic association with latent brain imaging phenotypes
Genome-wide association study (GWAS) is a powerful tool and has led to the identification of thousands of genetic variants associated with various diseases. So far, most of the phenotypes in GWAS are simple and predefined traits. Modern biotechnologies generate high-dimensional phenotypes (traits) that are often predictive of the ultimate phenotype such as diseases. Brain image is one example of high-dimensional phenotype that may contain important health information such as signs for neurodegenerative diseases. If we can identify such signs before a disease becomes clinically diagnosed, we may gain a valuable window for early intervention. However, we often do not know what is a meaningful phenotype to look for. Imaging-derived phenotypes (IDPs) have been extensively studied in the field of neuroimaging genetics to search for the genetic architecture of brain structure and functions. But the IDPs are usually predefined without genetic information and may not capture complex interactions of different brain regions. Recently, classification-based GWAS has changed how we conduct GWAS studies by using deep learning (DL) -based classifiers to classify genotypes. This has led to the discovery of novel associations between genetic markers and brain images. However, it does not explain what is the phenotype in the images. In this proposal, we aim to build on the strength of classification-based GWAS to improve the interpretability of both the latent phenotypes in brain images and the genetic markers associated with them. This will help nourish a new collaboration with the team that invented classification-based GWAS.
Biological & Life Sciences
How the brain organizes emotion knowledge
Emotions are well-known to play a key role in behavior, choice, and social interactions. The ability to differentiate between similar emotional states—known as emotion differentiation—is a core feature of adaptive socioemotional functioning, and a known vulnerability for psychiatric disorders. Despite its relevance to wellbeing and mental health, the neural mechanisms that allow the brain to discriminate between related emotion concepts remain poorly understood. This project proposes a novel, mechanistic approach to characterizing the representation of emotion, allowing for fine-grained distinctions. We test the hypothesis that emotion discrimination is supported by expanded neural representations, increasingly distinct and separable patterns of brain activity that allow for more precise emotion identification. Combining behavioral concept mapping, functional neuroimaging, and state-of-the-art multivariate analyses, the proposed research aims to 1) identify how emotion concepts are represented in the brain, and 2) establish whether emotion differentiation at the neural and behavioral level relate to socioemotional wellbeing. This approach fills a major gap in existing theories of emotion, namely how the brain represents emotion in a way that allows for adaptive emotion discrimination. The proposed work provides the foundation for a novel research line focused on the neural architecture of emotion, opening the possibility for collaborations both within and outside of Brown, and strengthening Brown’s visibility as a leader in innovative psychological research on emotion and mental health.
The role of growth cone membrane potential in axon guidance
Guidance of axons to their targets is critical for neural circuit assembly during development, and it is orchestrated by attractive and repulsive molecular cues that act through receptors on the leading process of the axon, the growth cone. While various signaling pathways have been implicated downstream of specific guidance receptors, the molecular logic of growth cone steering remains poorly understood. Importantly, signaling events that unite all guidance responses of the same valence (i.e. either attraction or repulsion) have not been discovered, and it is therefore still unclear how growth cones interpret attractive versus repulsive signals. Prior work has supported a role for ion flux across the growth cone membrane in axon guidance, but results regarding its instructive effect in attraction versus repulsion have been inconclusive, likely due to experimental limitations. We hypothesize that axon guidance cues
trigger transient, local, low-amplitude changes in growth cone membrane potential, and that the spatiotemporal pattern of these changes controls growth cone steering. We will employ cutting-edge genetically encoded voltage indicators to determine how changes in the growth cone membrane potential, i.e. voltage, contribute to axon attraction and repulsion, with the goal of uncovering molecular mechanisms that fundamentally distinguish these two types of guidance responses. Our work has the potential to resolve a long-standing conundrum about the role of the growth cone membrane potential in axon guidance, which would unify the field. By unravelling mechanisms of neuronal wiring, our research will improve our understanding of neurodevelopmental disease and can inform therapeutic approaches for neuronal repair.