The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded nearly $600,000 in grant funding for three projects headed by University of Vermont faculty, ranging from collaborative archeological research to digitalization of historic newspapers.

The NEH announcement of 177 national grants included special mention of work to be led by UVM assistant professor Parker VanValkenburgh, an archeological excavation of a Spanish colonial “forced resettlement” in Peru. VanValkenburgh and a multinational team will be researching how indigenous communities adapted their daily lives to the challenges of living under a new political-economic regime.

“This is a prestigious grant for an archeologist to receive,” said Scott Van Keuren, associate professor and interim chair of anthropology, explaining that the discipline bridges into the humanities but is more often considered science or social science. “An NEH grant is a coup for a younger professor leading a big collaborative effort.”

A second grant went to Jeffrey Marshall, UVM director of research collections and university archivist, to lead phase three of the Vermont Digital Newspaper Project, involving the digitization of 100,000 pages of Vermont newspapers, issued in English, French and Italian, dating from 1836 to 1922. The work is part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).

As a strong supporter of professional development, the NEH also awarded a grant to professor emeritus of English William Stephany to lead a five-week seminar for sixteen schoolteachers on Dante’s Divine Comedy.

The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency supporting peer-reviewed research and learning in history, literature, philosophy and other areas of the humanities.