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.
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?”