UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State Associate Professor of History Kate Merkel-Hess has been named a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Merkel-Hess was among 223 scholars and artists from 52 disciplines chosen for their “prior career achievement and exceptional promise,” according to the foundation, which was established in 1925 by Sen. Simon Guggenheim. All fellows receive a stipend to pursue their work under “the freest possible conditions.”
“Our new class of Guggenheim Fellows is representative of the world’s best thinkers, innovators, and creators in art, science and scholarship,” said Edward Hirsch, award-winning poet and president of the Guggenheim Foundation. “As the foundation enters its second century and looks to the future, I feel confident that this new class of 223 individuals will do bold and inspiring work, undaunted by the challenges ahead. We are honored to support their visionary contributions.”
A specialist in Chinese history, Merkel-Hess called the fellowship “an incredible honor.”
“I’m humbled to have been chosen alongside so many outstanding scholars, writers and artists, and to be in the company of Guggenheim alums who I have admired for years,” she said. “It’s particularly meaningful to have been selected for an award that celebrates the breadth of human creativity and exploration. I’m grateful to the Guggenheim Foundation for its commitment to and celebration of that broad spectrum of inquiry and creation.”
Amy S. Greenberg, head of the Department of History and George Winfree Professor of American History, knows firsthand what a significant accomplishment the award is for Merkel-Hess, having received a Guggenheim Fellowship herself in 2009.
"Professor Merkel-Hess is an internationally recognized expert on 20th century China and a true star of this department,” Greenberg said. “The Guggenheim recognizes her exemplary skills as a writer and historian. I think I speak for everyone in the History Department when I say how proud we are of her."
Merkel-Hess said the fellowship will support the writing of her next book, tentatively titled “The Long Resistance: Dissent and Disunity in China’s War with Japan.” The idea for the book, she said, came while researching her previous book, “Women and Their Warlords: Domesticating Militarism in Modern China,” published by University of Chicago Press in 2024, when she began to think about the politics of China’s disunity following the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912 and its eventual “disintegration into regional rule by warlords.”
From there, she became interested in how those politics played out during the years of the Second Sino-Japanese War, which started in 1937 and continued through the duration of World War II. Despite differing Chinese governments — parts of the country were overseen by the Nationalist (or KMT) Party, the Chinese Communist Party and regional warlords, while other areas were governed by a collaboration government — and very little international assistance, the country still managed to hold its own against the formidable Japanese invaders.
“This is a feat that, even today, Chinese people feel a lot of pride about,” Merkel-Hess said. “But we don’t really understand what made this resistance so successful. My research on mobilization and politics in wartime China shows that China’s political fragmentation worked to its advantage because it created regions of greater freedom and centers for experimentation with governance and policy that allowed Chinese people to generate varied resistance strategies tailored to specific locales and populations.”
Merkel-Hess said she became a Chinese historian out of the belief that Americans could benefit from gaining a better understanding of the complexity of China’s past and present.
“Whether in the classroom or on the page, my goal as a scholar of Chinese history is to help students and readers gain a greater appreciation for China, its people and its past,” she said. “I think that’s important not only for practical reasons having to do with economics or international relations but also because it allows us to more fully appreciate the beauty and diversity of human experiences.”
Merkel-Hess said her responsibilities teaching and mentoring students, collaborating with colleagues, and attending to her administrative duties as director of graduate studies for the Department of History is enriched by the time she gets to spend “conducting historical research and constructing historical narratives.” As such, she said she doesn’t take for granted the time and space the Guggenheim Fellowship will afford her to pursue her scholarship.
“For a historian, our most precious resource is long stretches of time to engage deeply and at length with primary sources — time to read and think and write and then think again,” Merkel-Hess said. “That time of deep thought and reflection is critical to returning to the classroom and all the other important work of the academy and the discipline not only with renewed energy but also with a deeper understanding and knowledge of the past that benefits our students, our institutions and the world more broadly.”
Merkel-Hess said she’s also grateful for the support that her colleagues, the College of the Liberal Arts and the University have provided since she arrived at Penn State in 2010.
“It means a great deal to be at an institution that encourages inquiry and exploration into the expanse of human knowledge and experiences and makes space for scholars to continue the deep thought and exploration that is so central to the work of the academy,” she said.