Three Professors Are Awarded Fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study

Membership allows the scholars - all with the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences - to conduct research and exchange ideas among an international community

Three professors with the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick - Leah DeVun, Eric Gawiser and Jane Ashton Sharp - have received fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study for the 2025-26 academic year.

"This prestigious membership allows for focused research and the free and open exchange of ideas among an international community of scholars at one of the foremost centers for intellectual inquiry," institute officials said in a statement.

Located in Princeton, N.J., the institute was established in 1930. Research is conducted across four schools - historical studies, mathematics, natural sciencesand social science.

Each year, the institute welcomes more than 250 post-doctoral researchers and scholarsfrom around the world to advance fundamental discovery as part of an interdisciplinary and collaborative environment. Visiting scholars are selected through a highly competitive process for their bold ideas, innovative methods and deep research questions by the permanent faculty- each of whom are preeminent leaders in their fields. Past faculty members include theoretical physicists Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer, archaeologist Hetty Goldman and diplomat and historian George Kennan.

Among past and present scholars, there have been 37 Nobel Laureates, 46 of the 64 Fields Medalists and 24 of the 28 Abel Prize Laureates, as well as MacArthur and Guggenheim fellows, winners of the Turing Award and the Wolf, Holberg, Kluge and Pulitzer Prizes.

Here are the three Rutgers faculty members who are pursuing research at the institute this year:

Leah DeVun

DeVun, a professor in the Department of History, specializes in premodern Europe; gender and sexuality; and science and medicine.

She will be working at the institute on a book about otherworldly experiences, including spirit possession, visionary dreams and contact with the dead through mediums.

"I think it's harder and harder to rely on what we see and hear to guide us through reality, and with artificial intelligence and the rise of chatbots, I think we struggle to distinguish life from not-life," DeVun said about her book project. "We need new approaches to thinking about knowledge creation, collaboration, and epistemology in the face of impossible facts and feelings, and I'm looking to history to help."

Eric Gawiser

Gawiser, a Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy, studies galaxies, stars and black holes to understand how these objects form and to probe fundamental physics.

His research at the institute will focus on resolving a cosmic mystery: how the first galaxies that formed in our universe appear brighter and more massive than predicted, a discovery made with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

"A powerful analysis technique developed by my group at Rutgers will allow me to effectively 'press rewind' on galaxies seen by JWST a bit later in the evolution of the universe . . . and to update our models of galaxy formation," Gawiser said.

Jane Ashton Sharp

Sharp, a professor in the Department of Art History, is a noted scholar of Russian art and is the research curator of the Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union at the Zimmerli Art Museum, where she has curated more than 20 exhibitions.

She has published widely on the historical avant-garde within the Russian empire and on unofficial art of the late Soviet period focusing on work produced in the Baltic states, Georgia and Russia.

Sharp will be working at the institute on a book manuscript about Soviet abstraction during the Thaw era (1950s-60s), based principally, but not exclusively, on artists working in Moscow.

"The book argues for a reappraisal of the historical relevance of this generation's complex engagement with state institutions and audiences," Sharp said.