Faculty Resources
Faculty Fellowship
Humanities Institute faculty fellowship program
The Humanities Institute (HI) at the University of South Florida has been supporting research and innovations in the humanities and relevant social sciences since 2003. HI enhances the educational experience of students, faculty, and the community through public lectures, programs, symposia, and other events. The USF Humanities Institute Faculty Fellows Program is designed to encourage interdisciplinarity and support original scholarly and creative work by USF faculty to enhance the research profile of the humanities at USF.
2026-2027 Faculty Fellowship Applications open in December 2025.
2025-2026 Cohort
Multispecies Ecologies: Bridging the Human/Nature Divide
This fellowship draws on multispecies ecologies to move beyond the human/nature divide that has often structured research in our various fields of Agroecology, Anthropology, and Political Theory. We are interested in how entities such as insects, water systems, trees, and economies have been treated as “other” due to their nonhuman status, and in how they actively participate through their own forms of agency and self-organization in shaping human life.
On one hand, this is a critical component of moving beyond the ways that the human/nature divide has contributed to Western and colonialist worldviews that structure much of contemporary life. On the other, it will help carry our research beyond just critiques of the destruction of nature and aspirations for sustainable systems to recognize those forms of life that persist in the wake of ecological ruins: more-than-human livable worlds.
Though it has multiple components, the heart of the fellowship will be a series of walking seminars for USF students in the spring of 2026 to engage with multispecies ecologies in the Tampa Bay area through knowledge, experience, and art.
Kellan Anfinson
Assistant Professor
School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies
About
I grew up in Montana and received my PhD from Johns Hopkins University. Since then, I have taught and conducted research in the United States, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. I am a political theorist who is interested in issues around power, ecology, and interdisciplinarity.
Q: How long have you been a faculty member here at USF?
A: I came to USF in the fall of 2022, though I had a postdoc here from 2017-2019.
Q: What are you currently reading?
A: For work I just started Kristin Ross’s new book The Commune Form. For fun I’m reading Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police.
Q: What is an interesting fact about you?
A: If I wasn’t writing and teaching, I would want to be cooking food for people.
Estelí Jiménez-Soto
Assistant Professor
Geosciences
Rebecca Zarger
Associate Professor
Anthropology
About
Dr. Rebecca Zarger is an environmental anthropologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Florida (USF); a Research Affiliate of USF’s Water Institute, College of Sustainability, and Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies; and Past-President of the Anthropology & Environment Society, a section of the American Anthropological Association.
Dr. Zarger’s interests in cultural anthropology include narratives of environmental change, loss, and livability in the Tampa Bay area and Belize, local environmental knowledge and practice, climate change and climate futures, waterscapes, urban forests, food, and children/youth.
She is USF’s Co-lead for Strong Coasts – an interdisciplinary, international research collaborative that centers ethnographic and participatory methods to connect people’s lived experiences and priorities for the future in coastal areas in the Caribbean with policymakers grappling with critical environmental challenges.
Q: How long have you been a faculty member here at USF?
A: began as Assistant Professor of Anthropology at USF in August 2006.
Q: What are you currently reading?
A: Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows and Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds are my current “fun” books, while Sophie Chao’s In the Shadow of the Palms is my latest scholarly read.
Q: What is an interesting fact about you?
A: I hiked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia, through Tennessee, North Carolina and
into Virginia in sections when I was in middle school. I would like to complete the
rest someday.
For questions about the Faculty Fellowship Program, contact Liz Kicak.