MFA Alum Emma Ressel Awarded Postdoctoral Fellowship at Center for Regional Studies

Emma Ressel is an artist working with large format film photography, re-photography, and archives.
December 1, 2025

Emma Ressel is an artist working with large format film photography, re-photography, and archives. Her current work researches natural history collections to examine how we describe nature to ourselves over vast timescales. Ressel earned her BA in Photography at Bard college and her MFA here at the University of New Mexico. She has exhibited solo shows at The New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science and Strata gallery, Sante Fe, NM. Her work is in permanent collections at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Jurassic Technology.

Recently, Ressel was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at Central for Regional Studies. The CRS (Central for Regional Studies) annually awards this fellowship to support scholars whose research aligns with the center’s mission to discover, create, preserve, disseminate and promote a culture of broad inquiry within and beyond the UNM community. With regards to this fellowship, Ressel says, “I am very thankful to the Center for Regional Studies for supporting this work. At a time when arts funding is scarce-both for artists and institutions-I hope this project demonstrates the value of continued artists research into photo history and museums in the region. I see so much potential for artists to work with museums and archives to deliver research and histories to a wider audience in inventive and effective ways, and I look forward to honing my work at this exciting juncture of disciplines.”

The CRS postdoctoral fellowship includes a $50,000 award, distributed in 12 monthly payments, along with a $2,000 research stipend to support travel and related expenses. Fellows also receive dedicated office space at the Center for Regional Studies. Congratulations Emma! We are incredibly proud and look forward to seeing your future work with this fellowship.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
LEARN MORE about Emma on her website https://www.emmaressel.com/about
EXPLORE the work of Emma Ressel by following on Instagram @emma.ressel.

MacDowell

Principal Art Lecturer, Jessamyn Lovell, receiving fellowship at the MacDowell Artist Residency

MacDowell, the nation’s first artist residency program, has awarded 134 Fellowships to visionary artists working across seven disciplines for its Spring Summer 2026 season. The program is located in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Between March and August of 2026, each artist has an average stay of four weeks. These artists were selected from a competitive pool of 2,618 applicants with an acceptance rate of only 5 percent.