2026-2027 Fellows
Ellena Baum is a MS student in Sustainability Science, with a background in small-scale regenerative farming and hands-on nature education for youth and adults of all ages. Her work focuses on hybrid chestnut trees and other staple perennial nut and fruit crops in the Connecticut River Valley. As a Renaissance of the Earth Teaching Fellow, she will offer a workshop in Fall 2026 that explores how early moderns cultivated, tended, and imagined chestnut trees.
Kiley Karlak Malloy (but you can call her Kit) is a PhD student in Comparative Literature as well as a poet and translator. She received a BA in Comparative Literature from Barnard College and an MA in Literary Translation from Trinity College Dublin. Her poetry can be found in 4x4, Hanging Loose Press, and Beyond Queer Words, while her translated work can be found at The Experiment Press and in Samovar. As a Renaissance of the Earth Teaching Fellow, Kit will offer a writing workshop in Spring 2027 that focuses on the earth’s role in healing and care.
2025-2026 Fellows
Bo Kim is a third-year MFA candidate in Studio Art whose research explores the intersection of ecological memory, participatory art, and Korean diasporic practices. Her work integrates archival inquiry, traditional materials, and environmental pedagogy to address climate grief and collective repair. As a Renaissance of the Earth Fellow, Bo will examine early modern texts focusing on cultivation tools and land management practices to explore transhistorical agrarian knowledge and sustainability.
Aliza Fassler is a PhD candidate in the Department of Environmental Conservation, where she studies wild bees in forests. She also serves as co-chair of the UMass Bee Campus USA Committee, working to enhance pollinator habitats on campus and engage the UMass community in pollinator education and stewardship. As a Renaissance of the Earth Fellow, Aliza will document pollinators at the Kinney Center and explore connections between the entomological techniques she uses today and early modern methods of observing the natural world.
Kiran Jandu is an art practitioner and academic working in experimental film, interactive performance, and site-based installation. Utilizing an archival research praxis, Kiran’s work addresses themes of intersectionality, mindfulness, and ecology. As a Renaissance of the Earth Teaching fellow, Kiran is co-organizing a workshop Grounded Knowledge: Wild Clay.
Michael Medeiros works at the intersection of words and artistic imagery, with a deep questioning of perceptive and conceptual experience driving his practice. Primarily a poet and ceramist, he also connects photography, printmaking, fiction and narrative non-fiction into community public art collaborations. As a Renaissance of the Earth Teaching fellow, Michael is co-organizing a workshop Grounded Knowledge: Wild Clay.
2024-2025 Fellows
Renaissance of the Earth Fellow, Hannah Gould, won the 2025 Gerald F. Scanlon Student Employee of the Year Award
in recognition of her outstanding research and public humanities projects at the Kinney Center and contributions to the UMass community.
Scout Turkel
Poet & Educator
Scout holds a degree in rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley, an MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Chicago.
Hannah Gould
English & Applied Plant and Soil Science
School of Humanities & Fine Arts
Stockbridge School of Agriculture
Hannah’s research includes public-facing materials that educate visitors to Kinney Center’s 28 acre grounds about the ecological histories and modern crises that face some of the plants and trees that grow there. Hannah is the recipient of the Undergraduate Sustainability Research Award for her project Community Classroom of Hope and she also serves as the Undersecretary of Sustainability in the Student Government Association for UMass.
Melanie Morgan
Horticulture & Sustainable Food and Farming
Stockbridge School of Agriculture
Melanie engages in innovative hands-on research across the Center’s rare book library, kitchen garden, and apple orchard as she considers: “What models for sustainability do the past offer to our present moment of ecological crises?”