Emerson Foundation Grant Program

This summer, 149 Hamilton students received Hamilton funding to engage in research with faculty mentors. Communications/Marketing Office intern Claire Williams ’25 has followed up with a few of them to find out what they learned through their work.

In 2016, the New York State government implemented a financial incentive program to make electric vehicles a more affordable choice and increase their adoption. Brian Hu ’24 spent his summer studying the effectiveness of this rebate program on electric vehicle adoption.

Andy Jian ’23 explores the question: what happens to the environment in a closed system?

Lena Schneck ’23 is looking into American prisons, specifically in relation to inadequate healthcare treatment, through a Levitt Center-funded project.

As Philip Chivily ’23 works on his summer Emerson project, “The Invisible Catholics Made Visible: Unveiling Black Catholics in Antebellum America,” he hopes to bring attention to the historical Black Catholic community and reframe what he views as a common misperception about the religion.

Language gives us the tools to approach and understand the world. It gives meaning to objects and facilitates interactions among people. In fact, as you’re reading this now, it is language that transforms these strange black lines into a story.

Inspired by his own family's immigrant history and a Russian history course he took with Professor Shoshana Keller, John Keirouz ’22, spent a summer researching Russian religious communities and how their experiences affected the way they related to the U.S. and the way they tried to organize and run their churches.

The roots of modern social issues can be traced to any given corner of world history, provided one knows how to follow them. White supremacist and patriarchal ideas, for example, might underpin the dynamics of 17th-century English court ceremonies — at least that’s what Hannah Petersen ’22 is considering in her Emerson grant research project on the presentation of “otherness” in Stuart period antimasques.

The idea of a summer research project might bring to mind images of laboratories and libraries. But for Malik Irish ’22, it looks a lot different. The sociology and art double major is currently working on music videos to accompany an EP he’s writing titled Fantasy World: Living in the System.

Andrew Little, a music and creative writing double major, undertook a research project to “make an instrument out of the whole color spectrum.”