Lincoln Lewis Named 2025 Public Humanities Fellow for Virginia Humanities

Founded in 1974, Virginia Humanities is one of fifty-six humanities councils created by Congress with money and support from the National Endowment for the Humanities to make the humanities available to all Americans. The organization’s Public Humanities Fellowships help writers, independent scholars, community historians, and college and university faculty members share meaningful research, stories, and cultural expressions that are relevant to Virginia’s diverse communities and that connect audiences to wider regional, national, and global contexts. All Public Humanities Fellows receive a $15,000 stipend to support a four-month project.

Lincoln Lewis is named the Public Humanities Fellow this year for his project that will assist the Tangier Island History Museum by facilitating conversations about how the community’s multiple storylines can best be captured. This is especially important due to the challenges the island and its museum collection are facing, including the risk of disaster due to tidal flooding and storms. In collaboration with the community, Lincoln will create a digital archive of the museum’s key holdings. The work aims to inform how other community museums can gather, document, and disseminate their shared local knowledge.

Lincoln Lewis is the Climate Equity Doctoral Fellow at the University of Virginia and a PhD Candidate in the Constructed Environment program. He studies how coastal communities – especially those with historic cultural assets – plan for the future amidst dynamic environmental change. Lincoln also presented his research at the 2025 AFS Annual Meeting recently.