Mines professor named 2027 New America Fellow

Lucas Bessire, a professor of anthropology at Colorado School of Mines, has been named a 2027 New America Fellow. 

Among the most prestigious honors in public intellectualism, the New America Fellows Program supports writers, journalists, filmmakers and innovators who generate bold ideas that spark new conversations about the most pressing issues of our day.  

Bessire, who co-directs the new Center for Ethnography at Mines, was selected for this honor based on the next manuscript he is developing that explores masculinity, climate change and truth on the High Plains through blending aspects of memoir, environmental history and ethnography. This project aims to build on the success of his 2021 book, Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains, which won seven awards and was named a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction. 

“It is an honor to join the extraordinary cohort of talented thinkers and storytellers brought together by New America,” Bessire said. “I am excited to use this opportunity to cultivate work that highlights the vital contribution that ethnography can make to some of the most pressing conversations of our times.” 

Alongside Bessire, the 2027 Class of New America Fellows features 13 journalists, filmmakers, multidisciplinary artists and scholars – including two Pulitzer Prize winners and a National Book Award winner – chosen from a pool of over 530 applicants. Their project themes range from borders and migration, land and labor, the courts and fortunes that shape public life, to the long aftermath of violence — to be told through books, documentary films and a podcast series. Fellows receive financial support, professional development and access to New America’s network of policy program experts, former Fellows and industry leaders in publishing and media.  

A solutions-oriented, nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C., New America has invested over $5.8 million in the last decade to support fellows’ projects. Since 1999, the New America Fellows Program has been an intellectual home to more than 300 fellows, resulting in the publication of 183 books, the production of 19 feature-length documentary films, two podcast series and several award-winning longform reporting projects. 

A fifth-generation Kansan, Bessire graduated from Kansas State University before earning his PhD in sociocultural anthropology from New York University. He has been a member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and a fellow of both Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Among other films, essays and articles, he is also the author of Behold the Black Caiman: A Chronicle of Ayoreo Life (University of Chicago Press 2014). In 2023, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow.  

Bessire joined Colorado School of Mines and the Department of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Mines in 2025.  Along with Jessica Smith, professor of anthropology and Dean’s Fellow for Earth and Society Programs, he founded the Center of Ethnography at Mines. This innovative initiative seeks to address major contemporary issues by meeting problems where they are, by putting people first, and by sharing stories that matter.