Two scholars from the University of Michigan have been awarded the esteemed 2025 Guggenheim Fellowships in recognition of their notable accomplishments and outstanding potential for future success.

U-M academics Benjamin Brose and Martin Murray were selected from a group of 198 individuals across the United States and Canada, engaging in 53 different fields, for the 100th cohort of fellows as announced by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

“We have faith that these innovative minds can confront the challenges we face today and lead our society toward a brighter and more optimistic future,” stated Edward Hirsch, president of the Guggenheim Foundation.

Brose holds a professorship in Chinese and Buddhist studies and serves as the chair of the Asian Languages and Cultures Department. His research centers around the historical development of Buddhism in China and cultural exchanges throughout East Asia.

Brose’s project explores the remarkable life of Gao Henian (1872­-1962), who, at the age of 19, was the heir of a prosperous family. In the winter of 1890, Gao embarked on an extensive pilgrimage throughout China. Departing from his family, budding career, and newly married spouse, he trekked thousands of miles on foot to visit a series of sacred Buddhist and Daoist mountains and to meet notable monks and practitioners residing there.

This marked the beginning of a series of long, frequently challenging pilgrimages that would occupy him for the following 35 years. In that time, he visited nearly every major Buddhist site in mainland China, witnessing one of the most pivotal periods in modern Chinese history. Gao forged friendships with many prominent religious figures of his time and became a significant advocate for the beleaguered Buddhist community, eventually working on behalf of ordinary citizens strained by natural calamities, foreign invasions, and civil unrest.

Fortunately, as stated by Brose, Gao possessed the insight to document his experiences. His extensive travel narrative provides an intimate, firsthand depiction of life in China from the final years of the Qing dynasty through the Republican period.

“In an era where academia and research are under scrutiny, I am extremely thankful to have received this generous support from the Guggenheim Foundation,” Brose expressed. “This fellowship enables me to dedicate the upcoming year to developing a new book project centered on the lives of Buddhist monastics and lay practitioners in China during the transformative and tumultuous years from 1860 to 1960. I look forward to conducting new research in China, Taiwan, and Japan.”

Murray is a professor specializing in urban planning, particularly focused on global urbanism with an emphasis on Johannesburg. He also serves as an adjunct professor in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies at U-M’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

Murray’s ongoing research intersects urban studies and planning, global urbanism, cultural geography, distressed urbanism, development, historical sociology, and African studies. His work particularly delves into two areas of inquiry: 1) the paths of global urbanism at the dawn of the 21st century, and 2) the rise of master-planned, integrally designed “private cities” constructed from the ground up, notably those that are presently being developed or in the conceptual phase in urban Africa.

“What are my feelings about becoming a Guggenheim Fellow? I am truly honored,” Murray shared. “I have dedicated a lengthy academic career to pursuing what I am passionate about—investigating squatted apartment complexes in Johannesburg, accompanying police on night patrols, navigating through informal settlements in Nairobi and Maputo, or attempting to comprehend the onerous economic situations in Detroit.

“I derive immense satisfaction from exploring unconventional places and the inhabitants who reside there. It is a privilege that the Guggenheim Fellowship committee has deemed my work worthy of acknowledgment.”

Murray’s fellowship endeavor focuses on continuing research and writing about the fate of neglected spaces following abandonment in the deindustrializing city of Detroit. Alongside colleagues Maria Arquero de Alarcon and Olaia Chivite, he has been investigating five struggling neighborhoods in Detroit for several years. These areas reflect high rates of vacancy, abandonment, foreclosures, population decline, restricted housing markets, and lowered municipal services.

“With this Guggenheim project, I aim to understand the historical uniqueness of urban decline and neglect in Detroit, a city that began to deteriorate after the ‘boom years’ of the 1950s,” Murray noted.

The selected fellows were chosen through a rigorous application and peer evaluation process from a pool of nearly 3,500 candidates. Each fellow is awarded a financial stipend to undertake independent work at the highest possible level under “the freest possible conditions.”
Since its inception in 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has distributed over $400 million in fellowships to more than 19,000 recipients.