The Humanities Council will welcome 12 visiting fellows in the 2025-26 academic year. These distinguished scholars, artists, writers, and practitioners will enrich the University community through their work in and beyond the classroom. Visiting fellows are nominated by chairs of humanities departments with support from directors of interdisciplinary programs in the humanities.

Six Long-Term Fellows, who are “in residence” at the University, will each teach or co-teach a course for a full semester. Courses will explore topics including trade and material culture in the ancient and medieval world, colonialism and memory, and the intersection of photography, race, and restitution.

In addition, the Council welcomes six Short-Term Fellows, who will visit campus for three to five days. During that time, they will lecture and participate in class discussions, colloquia, performances, or other informal events within their nominating departments.

Long-Term Visiting Fellow Jennifer Bajorek

Jennifer Bajorek is a professor of comparative literature and visual studies at Hampshire College and a senior research associate at the University of Johannesburg. She is an interdisciplinary scholar specializing in photography, art, and literature. Her work includes 20 years of collaborations in West African collections encompassing research, policy work, and conservation and restitution initiatives, and has been supported or recognized by numerous grants and awards, including a 2024 Arthur Rubin Outstanding Publication Award, for Unfixed (2020). 

Bajorek will be a Belknap Long-Term Visiting Fellow in the Humanities Council and the Department of English in spring 2026. At Princeton, she will complete a manuscript on the materiality of photography in Africa and teach a course on photography, race, and restitution.

Short-Term Visiting Fellow Jerry Brotton

Jerry Brotton is a writer, broadcaster and curator. He is a professor of Renaissance studies at Queen Mary University of London. His many books include The Sale of the Late King’s Goods (2006), the bestselling A History of the World in Twelve Maps (2012) and This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World (2016). He is a BBC TV and radio presenter, podcaster, and curator of exhibitions including “Talking Maps” (2019-2020), and a Tudor exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum (forthcoming 2028-29). His latest book is Four Points of the Compass (2024).

Brotton will serve as a Class of 1932 Short-Term Visiting Fellow in the Humanities Council and the Department of English.