Three University of Michigan researchers have been named 2019 Guggenheim Fellows by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, chosen from a pool of nearly 3,000 applicants.

The U-M recipients, who are among 168 scholars, artists and writers appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise:

• Erik Mueggler, professor of anthropology, LSA.

Mueggler has been working with mountain residents on China's southwestern periphery for more than 20 years. His ethnographic work focuses on the ritual, linguistic and interpersonal resources that minorities in China have employed to confront the violence-laced campaigns of the socialist era and the systematic exclusions and deprivations of the present.

“While getting the Guggenheim fellowship is a wonderful honor, I also see it as a recognition of the value of the cultural resources that these folks bring to the table, which are often ignored or denigrated by the larger society,” Mueggler said. “This recognition is particularly significant at the present moment when some minority people in China are being ever more closely surveilled or even incarcerated because of their differences from the majority.”