The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced Tuesday its 2024 class of fellows often known as recipients of the “genius grant."
They were selected from nominations in a year-long process that solicits input from their communities and peers.
The interdisciplinary award seeks to “enable” people with a track record and the potential to produce additional extraordinary work, said Marlies Carruth, director of the MacArthur Fellows Program.
Loka Ashwood, 39, Lexington, Kentucky, a sociologist at the University of Kentucky who studies how environmental issues, corporations and state policy intersect to harm rural communities and reduce their trust in democracy.
Ruha Benjamin, 46, Princeton, New Jersey, a transdisciplinary scholar and writer at Princeton University who studies how new technologies and medical research often reinforce social and racial inequality and bias
Jericho Brown, 48, Atlanta, a poet at Emory University whose lyrical work explores contemporary culture in part through vulnerable self-reflection and experimentation in form.