{"id":38196,"date":"2025-05-23T18:29:30","date_gmt":"2025-05-23T22:29:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=38196"},"modified":"2025-05-23T18:34:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T22:34:09","slug":"furman-standard-grant-helps-professors-shed-light-on-17th-century-music-uncover-ancient-civilizations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/furman-standard-grant-helps-professors-shed-light-on-17th-century-music-uncover-ancient-civilizations\/","title":{"rendered":"Furman Standard Grant helps professors shed light on 17th-century music, uncover ancient civilizations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Suresh Muthukrishnan<\/a>, professor of Earth, environmental and sustainability sciences, and Benjamin Dobbs<\/a>, assistant professor of music theory, have received this year\u2019s Furman Standard Grant<\/a>. The three-year internal grants will enable them to take their research to new levels and provide additional experiences for Furman students.<\/p>\n

\"A

Suresh Muthukrishnan, Department of Earth, Environmental, and Sustainability Sciences.<\/p><\/div>\n

Muthukrishnan directs the GIS and Remote Sensing Center at Furman. He will pursue three different projects that build on his previous work and chart new territory.<\/p>\n

First, Muthukrishnan will assist current archaeological efforts in Turkey by introducing geoarchaeological and geospatial techniques.<\/p>\n

The combination of these technologies helps researchers and archaeologists make connections between ground-based observations and large landscape features seen in imagery from above, he said.<\/p>\n

In a second initiative that uses a combination of fieldwork and remote sensing, Muthukrishnan will collaborate with a wildlife biologist and an archaeologist at the University of Mpumalanga in South Africa to investigate the long-term drivers of ecosystem changes in Kruger National Park.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ecosystem changes we observe today are a culmination of thousands of years of land use by the ancient kingdoms, modern conservation practices and the recent changes in climate,\u201d said Muthukrishnan, who\u2019ll use a novel trans-disciplinary approach to collect data to answer questions that will ultimately guide future conservation policies.<\/p>\n

He\u2019ll also lead a pilot project to develop a user-friendly, web-based GIS platform aimed at improving community resilience by bringing easier access to actionable climate and environmental data to inform local planning and decision making, including addressing urban heat and improving green spaces.<\/p>\n

Muthukrishnan said these projects present opportunities for external grants, study away and peer-reviewed publications and will spawn new courses that will equip students with technical skills applying geospatial and drone technologies to pursue research across fields like geoarchaeology, ecology, environmental science and sustainability sciences.<\/p>\n

\u201cWinning The Furman Standard award is an incredible honor,\u201d Muthukrishnan said. \u201cI’m really excited for the next few years and the opportunity to work alongside researchers on projects around the world. Collaboration and partnerships are critical for developing tools and technologies that help us uncover the past and deepen our understanding of human history and connections.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dobbs will use the grant to publish the complete works of 17th<\/sup> century German composer and music theorist Heinrich Grimm.<\/p>\n

Grimm served as cantor of the German city Magdeburg and played a critical role in the musical, cultural, religious and civic life there during the first half of the Thirty Years\u2019 War. His career suffered greatly as a result of the Sack of Magdeburg in 1631.<\/p>\n

Dobbs aims to make the composer\u2019s work \u201cmore broadly accessible again to students, performers, audiences and scholars \u2013 to give his work a second life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dobbs will travel to libraries in London, Germany, Poland and Austria where Grimm\u2019s works are housed. He\u2019ll transcribe and edit the works \u2013 sometimes filling in missing parts and voices. \u201cIt\u2019s something I\u2019ve dreamed about doing for the last 15 years. I\u2019m so thrilled to have the Furman Standard support to finally be able to make it happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Dobbs\u2019s research will benefit students in his Renaissance composition class where students will get a front-row seat to his editing process and how he pieces Grimm\u2019s works together for a modern edition.<\/p>\n

Dobbs also plans to collaborate with Stephen Gusukuma<\/a>, director of the Furman Singers, on readings of Grimm\u2019s work. \u201cI think Furman students will have the first opportunity in almost 400 years to sing some of these compositions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Suresh Muthukrishnan and Benjamin Dobbs are this year’s honorees for The Furman Standard Grant, a three-year award to support research and encourage faculty growth and development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":38198,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,95,39,47,9,55],"tags":[2055,1006,3411,717,3412,3413],"class_list":["post-38196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-earth-environmental-and-sustainability-sciences","category-faculty-development-center","category-music","category-study-away-and-international-education","category-sustainability","category-undergraduate-research","tag-archaeology","tag-drones","tag-faculty-growth-and-development","tag-gis","tag-heinrich-grimm","tag-renaissance-composer"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38196"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38202,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38196\/revisions\/38202"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}