Anya Bernstein Awarded 2026 Guggenheim Fellowship for Research on Climate, Extinction, and the Russian Arctic

The Department of Anthropology is pleased to share that Professor Anya Bernstein has been named a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow. She is one of six Harvard faculty members recognized this year, joining a distinguished cohort of scholars and artists whose work spans disciplines from political theory to historical fiction.

This year’s class includes (clockwise from upper left) Anya Bernstein, Mina Cikara, Adam Mestyan, Daniel Ziblatt, Namwali Serpell, and Gina Schouten. Photos by Carlos Sanchez (Bernstein), Stu Rosen (Cikara), and Jordan Kines (Serpell).

Professor Bernstein’s research explores the intersections of science and technology, death and immortality, human–animal relations, and environmental change. Her previous book examined the enduring pursuit of immortality in Russia, tracing its development from 19th-century philosophical thought through Soviet-era scientific experimentation to contemporary movements in cryonics and biogerontology.

The Guggenheim Fellowship will support Bernstein’s forthcoming book, Pleistocene Park: Extinction and Eternity in the Russian Arctic. This project offers a transnational ethnography of an ambitious effort to recreate an Ice Age ecosystem in the Siberian Arctic. By restoring grazing animal populations, the initiative aims to slow permafrost thaw and mitigate the powerful climate feedback loops associated with it. Following the project from Siberia to gene-editing laboratories in Boston, Bernstein’s work examines how fundamental categories—time, species, and death—are being reconfigured as a prehistoric landscape is rebuilt as a strategy for contemporary human survival.

Established in 1925, the Guggenheim Fellowship is one of the most prestigious honors in the United States, supporting individuals who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. This year’s class includes 233 fellows selected from nearly 5,000 applicants, representing 55 disciplines and a wide geographic range.

We warmly congratulate Professor Bernstein and all of this year’s Guggenheim Fellows.

Special thanks to The FAS Current team for their coverage! 

Learn more here: https://current.fas.harvard.edu/stories/six-faculty-named-2026-guggenheim-fellows