Stella Nair Appointed Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks and the National Humanities Center

Aug 7, 2023 by SAH News

Stella Nair has recently been appointed a Fellow at both Dumbarton Oaks and the National Humanities Center.

The UCLA Art History Department is pleased to share that Associate Professor Stella Nair has been appointed as a Senior Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks for Pre-Columbian Studies. 

The Pre-Columbian Studies program at Dumbarton Oaks was founded in 1963 to support the study of the art and archaeology of the ancient Americas. This research encompasses cultures that thrived in the western hemisphere from northern Mexico to southern South America, from the earliest times to the sixteenth century. The Senior Fellows committee advises the Director of Dumbarton Oaks on all aspects of research concerning Pre-Columbian studies at Dumbarton Oaks.   Read more about this award here.

Stella Nair, associate professor of Indigenous Arts of the Americas in the Department of Art History and a core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute, has been appointed a fellow of the National Humanities Center for 2023–24. Nair is the director of both the Andean Laboratory and the Architecture Laboratory in the Cotsen Institute, Clark Professor, and the director of graduate studies in art history. Trained as an architect and architectural historian, she has conducted fieldwork in Bolivia, Mexico, Peru, and the American Midwest, with ongoing projects in the southcentral Andes.

Nair will be one of 35 resident scholars from international colleges and universities representing humanistic scholarship working on individual research projects with the opportunity to share ideas in seminars, lectures and conferences at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. Her project is focused on Inca Architecture: Chapters in the History of a (Gendered) Profession.  Read more about the National Humanities Center and Stella's work here.

Stella Nair joined SAH in 1995. She was awarded the Edilia and François-Auguste de Montêquin Fellowship for a Junior Scholar in 1999 and has served on the de Montêquin Fellowship Committee.