Sara Hendren MDes ’13, a designer- and researcher-in-residence at Olin College of Engineering, is the recipient of a 2017 Public Scholar grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Now in its third year, the program supports well-researched books in the humanities aimed at reaching a broad audience. Hendren plans to use the funding to research unexpected places where disability is at the heart of design. She is working on a publication currently titled, “A Scissor, a Shoe, the Sidewalk’s Slant: Disability and the Unlikely Origins of Everyday Things.”

“It’s thrilling and an honor to be included in this group of writers who are tackling complex ideas for a broad audience. My own subject of disability is an urgent matter of human rights and creative opportunities, and the readers who can influence the future wisely and inclusively are both inside and far outside academia,” Hendren told Olin College news.

It was also recently announced that Hendren has been named a 2018 New America National Fellow by the think tank New America. As the Eric & Wendy Schmidt Fellow, Hendren will continue her work on the ways in which the human body adapts to the built environment and our collective stakes in an inclusively designed future. She joins 12 other Fellows, including journalists, producers, practitioners, and scholars, in the class of 2018.

Image courtesy of LinkedIn.