Main content
Emory nursing postdoc earns American Council of Learned Societies fellowship
Media Contact
Melanie Kieve
Senior Director of Communications and Marketing
Photo of three School of Nursing students in school lobby with balloons

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) has awarded a 2024 ACLS Fellowship to Marissa Nichols, a postdoctoral fellow at the Emory University Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing.

The ACLS Fellowship Program supports scholars poised to make significant contributions to knowledge in any humanities or interpretive social sciences field. The program selected 60 early-career scholars from 1,100 applicants for the fellowship, which provides each of them up to $60,000 for six to 12 months of sustained research and writing.

The fellowship will support Nichols’ research on the impact of rural nurses and Indigenous authorities on health policy and practices in the southern state of Oaxaca, Mexico, in the 1930s and 1940s.

“The applications we received this year were nothing short of inspiring — a powerful reminder of the capacity of humanistic research to illuminate and deepen understanding of the workings of our world,” said John Paul Christy, ACLS senior director of U.S. programs.

Nichols is the inaugural postdoctoral fellow with the Center for Healthcare History and Policy at the School of Nursing. As part of the Center, Nichols works on her research, which puts nursing history into dialogue with ethnohistory (Indigenous history). She also teaches classes on the history of race and healthcare and supports the Las Voces Oral History Project, which documents the lived experiences of Latinx workers in the rural and urban Southeast. She holds a PhD in Latin American history from Emory.

The ACLS Fellowship Program is funded primarily by its endowment, which has benefited from contributions by the Mellon Foundation, Arcadia Charitable Trust, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the ACLS Research University Consortium, ACLS Associate member network and gifts from fellows and friends.

About the School of Nursing

As one of the nation's top nursing schools, the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University is committed to educating visionary nurse leaders and scholars. Home to the No. 1 master's, No. 3 BSN and No. 6 DNP programs nationwide, the school has been recognized as a Center of Excellence in Nursing Education by the National League of Nursing. The school offers undergraduate, master’s, doctoral and non-degree programs, bringing together cutting-edge resources, distinguished faculty, top clinical experiences and access to leading health care partners to shape the future of nursing and impact the world's health and well-being. Learn more at nursing.emory.edu.


Recent News