UW-Madison professor receives prestigious $800K ‘genius’ award
A University of Wisconsin-Madison historian Wednesday won one of the nation’s most prestigious awards, which comes with a no strings attached $800,000 stipend to spend however she sees fit.
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation named UW-Madison professor Monica Kim, 44, as one of 25 national recipients of the MacArthur fellowship. Also known as the “genius grant,” the awards are given annually to a select group of individand uals across a range of disciplines who show exceptional creativity in their work and future ambitions.
Individuals cannot apply for the awards. Instead, hundreds of anonymous nominators across the country submit about 2,000 nominations each year for a secret selection committee to consider.
Over the past 30 years, about 1,100 individuals have won the award, including journalist TaNehisi Coates, surgeon and author Atul Gawande sociologist Matthew Desmond, who wrote a book about eviction in Milwaukee.
At least four other UWMadison professors have received the MacArthur award, with the two most recent grants awarded in 2019 to cartoonist and art professor Lynda Barry and climate researcher Andrea Dutton.
Kim’s research focuses on the changes in warfare over the 20th century by studying the experiences of ordinary people as opposed to official accounts. She has studied the Korean War extensively, an interest stemming from her Korean parents immigrating to the U.S. during that time.
Kim earned her bachelor’s degree from Yale University and her doctorate from the University of Michigan. She taught at New York University before joining UW-Madison in 2020.
Other grant recipients this year include Priti Krishtel, a lawyer exposing inequities in the patent system to make medications affordable; Jennifer Carlson, a sociologist studying motivations and assumptions that shape the country’s gun culture; and Jenna Jambeck, an environmental engineer working to reduce plastic pollution.