CASBS Announces 2026-27 Fellows
The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University is pleased to announce its 2026-27 fellows class, comprised of 36 scholars representing 19 U.S. institutions and 11 international institutions and programs.
Members of the 2026-27 class conduct research in a variety of fields in the social and behavioral sciences and cognate disciplines, including anthropology, communication, computational social science, economics, education, geography, history, law, linguistics, music, neuroscience and neurobiology, philosophy, political science, psychology, public health, science and technology studies, sociology, statistics and probability, and urban studies and planning.
Five fellows are Stanford faculty: Ralph Richard Banks (law), Robert Kaplan (public health), Brian Knutson (psychology), Alison McQueen (political science), and Forrest Stuart (sociology).
Three members of the class have enjoyed previous CASBS fellowships: Robert Kaplan (2015-16), Eric Otchere (2020-21), and Lynda Powell (2015-16).
The 2026-27 fellows will arrive in early September and be the first class to take residence under Mariano-Florentino “Tino” Cuéllar, who was announced as the Center’s next director in January 2026.
“The arrival of new leadership only amplifies the excitement surrounding the arrival of a new fellows class, something that’s anticipated widely across social and behavioral science communities,” said Sally Schroeder, CASBS’s deputy director. “Given the inescapable challenges we’re witnessing today at local, national, and international levels, it’s imperative that we maintain a high bar and advance our fellowship program’s 72-year legacy of excellence. We’re confident we’ve met the moment in selecting this collection of dynamic, innovative thinkers comprising the 2026-27 fellows class.”
The Center will post biographical sketches of the fellows, including descriptions of fellowship year research projects, in August. It is possible that additional fellows will join the roster in the coming months.
In addition, continuing a pilot program launched in 2025, it is likely that one or more practitioner fellows will join the roster. The deadline to apply for a practitioner fellowship is April 10, 2026.
Several 2026-27 fellows are funded by some of the Center’s partner fellowship programs. The Science and Technology Policy Research and Information Center (STPI) within the National Applied Research Laboratories of Taiwan (NARLabs), a federal government agency, will support one Stanford-Taiwan Social Science fellow (Joseph Tao-yi Wang). This is the ninth year of one or more fellows at CASBS under this partnership. For the eighth consecutive year, the Chinese University of Hong Kong will support at least one CUHK-Stanford University CASBS fellow in 2026-27 (Lawrence Cheung). This is the seventh year the National University of Singapore will support a NUS Fellow (Kah-Wee Lee). The Center will welcome its second RJ-CASBS Fellow (Andrius Kazukauskas) under a 2023 agreement with Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ), an independent foundation in Sweden.
In addition, the Center will host its sixth STIAS-Iso Lomso fellow (Lewis Abedi Asante) based on an ongoing collaboration with the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, South Africa.
The Center has three other possible appointment designations in addition to fellows and practitioner fellows: visiting scholars (academics who are spouses/partners of fellows), research affiliates (non-Stanford scholars who lead CASBS-based research projects), and faculty fellows (Stanford faculty who lead CASBS-based research projects). The Center will finalize these appointments by late spring or summer.
The 2026-27 fellows class:
