Five USC Students Named Summer Sustainability Fellows

The USC Libraries have named five students as their summer 2024 sustainability fellows. 

Established in 2023, the Summer Primary Source Research Fellowships on Sustainability encourage student engagement with library collections by supporting public-facing research at the intersection of history, gender studies, and sustainability studies. They are made possible by generous funding from leaders and units across the university, including USC president Carol Folt, USC Libraries dean Melissa Just, USC Dornsife divisional dean for social sciences William Deverell, the USC Dornsife Van Hunnick History Department, and the USC Dornsife Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability.

The five fellows are:

  • David de Rozas. A PhD student in the Media Arts + Practice program at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, de Rozas is researching the history of urban transformation in downtown Los Angeles in support of a broader investigation into the social and environmental impacts of the Downtown Los Angeles 2040 redevelopment plan.
  • Sharon Salgado Martinez. A PhD student in history at USC Dornsife, Salgado Martinez is researching the injustices surrounding the dispossession of Indigenous territories and the subsequent degradation of those lands.
  • Halo Starling. A PhD student in the Media Arts + Practice at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, Starling is consulting the ONE Archives’ Harry Hay papers to investigate how Hay’s communist principles informed his role in establishing the Radical Faeries movement.
  • Michelle Salinas Wamungu. A PhD student in the Media Arts + Practice program at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, Wamungu is researching artistic responses to environmental racism and climate change.
  • Celia Wood. An undergraduate majoring in animation and biological sciences, Wood is mining primary source collections for insights into how to promote the public understanding of scientific knowledge through the art of animation.


From June 4 to August 12, the fellows are working in close consultation with relevant library faculty and staff and under the direction of Rebecca Corbett, director of special projects within the USC Libraries' Specialized Collections group.

“I am incredibly excited to be working with the talented students who were selected as fellows this year, they all bring tremendous creativity and passion to their research,” said Corbett. “Watching students create public-facing projects based on original research with the libraries’ archival collections is truly a joy.”