Professor Lawrie Balfour was awarded a year-long fellowship in 2020 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Dr. Balfour's project, Imagining Freedom: Toni Morrison and the Work of Words, contests the traditional study of freedom in political theory and philosophy by tracing Morrison's reflections on its many meanings in her novels and non-fiction from the 1970s-2019.

This year Dr. Balfour was also named as one of only 25 members of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. The School "takes as its mission the analysis of contemporary societies and social change. It is devoted to a pluralistic and critical approach to social research, from a multidisciplinary and international perspective." 

Dr. Balfour has held previous fellowships from the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research, the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life at Harvard Divinity School, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.