Alumnae Kate Spradley Receives MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’

Kate Spradley (PhD ‘06) received a “Genius Grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, one of 20 fellows selected for 2026. The MacArthur Fellows Program awards grants of $800,000 over five years to individuals who have demonstrated exceptional creativity, a track record of excellence, and the ability to impact society in significant and beneficial ways.

A professor of anthropology at Texas State University, Spradley is the founder and director of Operation Identification, an initiative that strives to recover, identify, and return migrants’ remains found along the Texas-Mexico border. This humanitarian effort has created an organized set of reference data and classification criteria, population specific for skeletal remains of Latin American origin.

by Graycen Clements