Research Triangle Park, N.C.  The National Humanities Center this month welcomes historian David Christian of San Diego State University, the first recipient of the Donnelley Family Fellowship. This fellowship, endowed by Vivian and Strachan Donnelley, Ph.D., is awarded annually to a scholar working at the intersection of nature, the environment, and the humanities.

While at the Center, David Christian will be working on the second volume of his synoptic history of Inner Eurasia, the vast region extending from the former Soviet Union to Mongolia and Xinjiang, whose distinct geographic and climatological features have played significant roles in its political and cultural development.

Christian's previous books have included volumes on modern Russia, the essential role of vodka in nineteenth-century Russian economics and politics, and a sweeping history of life beginning from the origin of the universe entitled Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History, for which he won the 2005 World History Association prize for best book. His current project continues the project he began in his 1998 volume, A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, in which he traced the ways in which Inner Eurasia's harsh ecological conditions contributed to its development of exceptionally mobile populations, its slow adoption of agricultural settlements, and the development of technologies such as gunpowder, the compass, and bronze-working from the Paleolithic period to the eleventh century. In this second volume, he will discuss how these facets of the region's geography and ecology have influenced the imperial and social history of the region from 1250 to the present.

The Donnelley Family Fellowship is the latest of many contributions made to the National Humanities Center by Strachan Donnelley and his family. Donnelley is president and founder of The Center for Humans and Nature, a non-profit organization that promotes interdisciplinary research, education, and outreach with respect to the historical dynamics and ongoing interactions of humans and nature. Donnelley, a trustee emeritus of the National Humanities Center, has long been a leader in promoting scholarship investigating the natural world and conservation causes. In addition to his involvement with the National Humanities Center, he has been a director or trustee of numerous organizations, including The Hastings Center, Sarah Lawrence College, The Institute of Policy Sciences and Public Affairs, The New School for Social Research, the Yale Institute of Biospheric Studies, and The Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation.

To learn more about the National Humanities Center and its Fellowship program, please contact Don Solomon (dsolomon@nationalhumanitiescenter.org) or visit the Center's website: nationalhumanitiescenter.org.

The National Humanities Center is the leading major independent American institute for advanced study in all fields of the humanities. Privately incorporated and governed by a distinguished board of trustees from academic, professional, and public life, the Center provides a national focus for the best work in the liberal arts, drawing attention to the enduring value of ancient and modern history, language and literature, ethical and moral reflection, artistic and cultural traditions, and critical thought in every area of humanistic investigation. By encouraging excellence in scholarship, the Center seeks to insure the continuing strength of the liberal arts and to affirm the importance of the humanities in American life.