Today the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced this year’s fellowship winners, including Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy.
Chosen from a rigorous application and peer review process out of almost 2,500 applicants, Currid-Halkett is one of 171 successful applicants “appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise,” according to the foundation.
Currid-Halkett holds the James Irvine Chair in Urban and Regional Planning at the USC Price School. In 2022, she was appointed the Kluge Chair in Modern Culture at the Library of Congress. Her research focuses on the arts and culture, the American consumer economy and the role of culture in geographic and class divides.
“The Guggenheim Fellowship recognizes the talents and accomplishments of scholars who have made significant impact across every area of knowledge,” said USC Interim Provost Elizabeth Graddy. “I am excited to congratulate and recognize Elizabeth and her groundbreaking scholarship through this well-deserved fellowship.”
“Everyone at the USC Price School knew Elizabeth was brilliant. Now the whole world knows,” said Dana Goldman, dean and C. Erwin and Ione L. Piper Chair of the USC Price School. “She is not only an accomplished scholar, but also one of the most original thinkers at the University of Southern California.”
The fellowship will support Currid-Halkett’s research into the evolution of American cities. She plans to analyze archives of Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps from 1867 to 1977. These maps provide granular street-level data on more than 12,000 U.S. cities and towns during a time of vast social, cultural and economic change.
Sanborn maps, which helped fire insurance agents assess risk for specific properties, are a vastly understudied data collection. Currid-Halkett plans to compare the Sanborn Maps with archival zoning maps to study the evolution of the built environment through both lenses. Unlike conventional city zoning maps, which show legally prescribed uses of space, the Sanborn Maps detail how people actually used the built environment – and how this adaptability and repurposing of space is reflected in the economic development and the transformation of U.S. cities in the 19th and 20th centuries, according to Currid-Halkett.
“Truthfully, I am still in shock! The Guggenheim Fellowship is one of the highest awards someone in the humanities and social sciences can receive,” said Currid-Halkett. “I feel truly honored to be a part of this incredible intellectual and creative community.”
At the USC Price School, Currid-Halkett teaches courses in economic development and urban policy and planning. She is the author of The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art and Music Drive New York City (Princeton University Press 2007); Starstruck: The Business of Celebrity (Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010) and The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class (Princeton University Press, 2017), which was named one of the best books of the year by The Economist, and most recently The Overlooked Americans (Basic Books, June 2023).
Currid-Halkett’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, Salon, the Economist, the New Yorker, and the Times Literary Supplement, among others, and she has contributed to a variety of academic and mainstream publications including the Journal of Economic Geography, Economic Development Quarterly, the Journal of the American Planning Association, and the Harvard Business Review.
She is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network and has been a member of the WEF Global Future Councils and Industry Strategy Officers.
“Like Emerson, I believe that fullness in life comes from following our calling,” said Edward Hirsch, President of the Guggenheim Foundation and 1985 Fellow in Poetry, in a foundation news release. “The new class of Fellows has followed their calling to enhance all of our lives, to provide greater human knowledge and deeper understanding. We’re lucky to look to them to bring us into the future.”
About the Guggenheim FoundationSince its establishment, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has granted nearly $400 million in fellowships to over 18,000 individuals, among whom are more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award, and other internationally recognized honors. More information about this year’s fellowships can be found on the foundation’s website here: https://www.gf.org/announcements/.