Brandeis alumna Ieva Jusionyte named MacArthur Fellow
Photo Credit: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
October 9, 2025
Cultural anthropologist, professor and author Ieva Jusionyte, GSAS MA’07, PhD’12, has been named a 2025 MacArthur Fellow.
Jusionyte is the Watson Family University Professor of International Security and Anthropology in the Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, where she also serves as director of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies.
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation described Jusionyte’s work as demonstrating the power of ethnographic fieldwork to produce nuanced forms of knowledge.
“By grounding her research in different types of worker cultures, Jusionyte sheds light on places and policy effects that are largely overlooked in broader discourse about border security,” the foundation noted.
She is among 22 recipients of this year’s MacArthur “genius grants.” Fellows receive a no-strings-attached award of $800,000, and are nominated anonymously by leaders in their respective fields for showing exceptional originality and dedication to creative pursuits.
Jusionyte came to Brandeis from Lithuania in 2006 on a Fulbright Fellowship. In a 2017 interview, she said anthropology “provides us with crucial analytic and methodological tools to understand the most perplexing of social issues.”
