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Perfecting the fine art of changing a tire while holding a flashlight was one of the many skills Caroline Elkins cultivated when researching Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Holt, 2005). Elkins traveled miles over pothole-strewn roads to piece together her revelatory work on the Mau Mau uprising and Britain's policy to intern 1.5 million Kikuyu in detention camps from 1952 to 1960.

Tracking down and interviewing survivors of the camps–many of whom had never spoken publicly about their experiences–was intellectually, physically, and emotionally demanding, recalls Elkins, who wrote the entire manuscript during her fellowship year.

"The timing couldn't have been more perfect," says Elkins. An associate professor in Harvard's Department of History and the mother of two young children, Elkins describes the Institute as a welcome retreat. "It offered me the space I needed to think and write and a cohort of people who were simply exceptional," she says. "When I came to an impasse in the writing or analysis, I had a group of the world's foremost thinkers sitting right around me who could provide great feedback."

Photo by Webb Chappell

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