Iowa Board of Regents

UI's Mariola Espinosa receives prestigious NEH grant

Mariola Espinosa, associate professor of history, was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant, the nation’s most prestigious humanities scholarship. 

This year, the NEH awarded $22.6 million to 219 humanities projects nationwide. Since its inception in 1965, NEH has funded more than $6.4 billion to more than 70,000 projects in all 50 states.

Espinosa received one of 78 NEH fellowships awarded this year to support advanced research and writing projects by humanities scholars. Espinosa will use her $60,000 award to research and write a book chronicling the development of medicine in Puerto Rico. 

“This award means that others find my ideas and work on the history of medicine in Puerto Rico valuable and important,” Espinosa says. “I am from Puerto Rico, and this project has always been somewhat personal since it is taking me back to study something about my home. Some of the people I find in my sources are people who I have heard about through family stories.”

Espinosa’s project looks at the medical professional and popular reactions to a new therapy technique, known as asuerotherapy, which became popular in Spanish-speaking countries in 1929. 

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