The Office of Research and Creative Scholarship is pleased to announce the recipients of this year’s Norman and Irma Mann Stearns Distinguished Faculty Award. Established by the late Dr. Norman Stearns and Emerson alumna Irma Mann Stearns ’67, this award honors a full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty member in recognition of outstanding scholarly or creative achievement. A $3,000 award is presented annually to at least one applicant. Funding may be used to enhance an ongoing project or for the development of a new scholarly or creative endeavor. Travel is strongly encouraged to be a part of the project activity.

Adam Franklin-Lyons
Associate Professor, Marlboro Institute

Adam-Franklin Lyons is an Associate Professor in the Marlboro Institute. A former member of the Marlboro College faculty, Dr. Franklin-Lyons is interested in almost anything Medieval. He will use the Mann Stearns award to travel to Spain to gather a collection of 360-degree photos from strategic lookouts used during the medieval period, as part of his project entitled “Visualizing Networks of Medieval Communication: Photographs and Maps of Medieval Lookout Points.” The result will be an interactive map demonstrating the connections and limits of urban communication in the fourteenth-century Crown of Aragon.

Malic Amalya
Assistant Professor, Visual and Media Arts

Malic Amalya is an Assistant Professor in the department of Visual and Media Arts whose films attend to the emotional impact of attachment and estrangement, and the corresponding political repercussions of alliances and enmities. Professor Amalya will use the Mann Stearns award to support the production of a new film, “New Earth: a 16mm Experimental Documentary Film about the Mythos of Flight” Currently in development, “New Earth” critically examines cultural metaphors, values, doctrines, and practices connected to colonialism and flight. The Mann Stearns award will support travel to Florida to film the Kennedy Space Center, including a SpaceX rocket launching.