Dumbarton Oaks is a Harvard University research institute, library, museum, and garden located in Washington, DC. The institution is the legacy of Robert and Mildred Bliss, collectors of art and patrons of learning in the humanities. The museum houses world-class collections of Byzantine and Pre-Columbian art, two areas of interest to the Blisses. A third revolves around the historic garden, which Mildred Bliss created in close collaboration with renowned landscape designer Beatrix Farrand. Since 1940, when the Blisses gifted the estate and collections to Harvard University, Dumbarton Oaks has supported research in Byzantine Studies. Later it embraced Pre-Columbian and Garden and Landscape Studies. The support takes the form of fellowships and other awards, scholarly conferences, publications, and digital initiatives. In recent years, Dumbarton Oaks has also developed educational programs focusing on its collections and garden.

The Mellon Initiative in Urban Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks offers semester-long fellowships to academics and designers, with additional opportunities for field research funding, and shorter-term invitational residencies for senior practitioners.

SAH congratulates all these Mellon Fellows for recognition and support of their work. 

The following SAH members have been named Mellon Fellows in the past 6 years.  The name of their research is also listed below:

Arijit Sen,  Spring, 2021
"Restorative Ligaments:  Spaces of Everyday Resistance and Grassroots world-Making in Milwaukee's Northside"

Sheila Crane,  Spring, 2019
"Inventing Informality"

Sahar Hosseini,  Fall, 2018
"The Zayandehrud River Speaks:  Reading the Riverine Landscapes of Seventeenth-Century Isfahan"

Jacob Boswell,  Spring, 2018
"Urban Space and Climate in the Progressive-Era American City"

Maria Taylor,  Spring, 2018
"Between Town and Country:  The Soviet City-Landscape Nexus in Global Perspective"

Udo Weilacher (past Member),  Spring, 2017
"Between Land Art and Landscape Architecture"

Sara Jensen Carr,  Spring, 2017
"The Topography of Wellness:  Health and the American Urban Landscape"

Burak Erdim,  Fall, 2016
"The Academy and the State:  Situating Land Economics and Development in the Cold War Middle East"

Jeanne Haffner (past Member),  2015-2017
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Urban Landscape Studies

To see a full list of Mellon Fellows at Dumbarton Oaks from 2015 to the present, click here

Read more about Dumbarton Oaks here