We are delighted to announce that Sonia Paradis is the 2026 recipient of the Marjorie Harding Memorial Fellowship and Alissa O’Brien is the 2026 recipient of the the Thoreau Country Conservation Alliance Fellowship.
Sonia Paradis
Alissa O’Brien
The Marjorie Harding Memorial Fellowship, generously funded by the Harding family, honors the life and legacy of Marjorie Brook Harding, who worked diligently to bring together the Thoreau Society, the Walden Woods Project, and SUNY Geneseo to advance Thoreau studies and conservation of Thoreau Country and to keep alive the legacy of Walter Harding, Marjorie’s husband, an early leader in Thoreau studies. The fruits of this labor can be seen in the Digital Thoreau Project and in the annual Walter Harding Lecture Series at SUNY Geneseo.
The Thoreau Alliance is delighted to award the 2026 Marjorie Harding Memorial Fellowship to Sonia Paradis. Sonia is PhD candidate at the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Religion (CERC) at Sherbrooke University in Québec (Canada). Before turning to her doctoral research, Sonia trained and worked in the areas of history and biomedical ethics. With scholarly interests in Emerson, Thoreau, and Transcendentalism, her research examines the relationships between modern religion, transformations of the self, territory, northern imagination, and Indigenous mediations. In particular, it draws on the “Canada and Indian Notebooks” held at the Morgan Library, as well as on various personal writings, journals, and correspondence by Concord-based authors. Sonia has received a faculty excellence scholarship, and has two articles forthcoming.
The Thoreau Country Conservation Alliance (TCCA) Fellowship is named in honor of the TCCA, which was formed in the 1980s with leadership from Thoreau Society members and which advocated for the protection of Walden Woods from development. The TCCA fellowship is endowed by two gifts, one in memory of J. Walter Brain, a founding member of TCCA, and a second one in memory of Annette Paradise, who had an abiding love of Walden Pond. The establishment of the fellowship coincided with the acquisition of the J. Walter Brain papers, which detail Mr. Brain’s many decades of advocacy for Walden Woods and his intimate explorations of Walden Woods’ natural and social history.
The Thoreau Alliance is delighted to award the 2026 Thoreau Country Conservation Alliance (TCCA) Fellowship to Alissa O’Brien. Alissa is a nature illustrator with commissioned art projects and gallery exhibitions in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Alissa is a featured artist at Artisan Way Studio in Concord (MA), and has a solo art exhibition at Walden Pond. Allisa holds a bachelor’s degree from Rhode Island College in Fine Arts and attended the Rhode Island School of Design for a certificate in natural science illustration in 2017.
Alissa’s art is currently on view at the Walden Pond State Reservation Visitor Center in the exhibition “As Deliberate as Nature,” which runs through July.
Alissa’s art is also featured in the Spring issue of the Thoreau Society Bulletin.
To learn more about the fellowships and past recipients, please visit: thoreausociety.org/fellowships/ The call for fellowship applications is typically posted in the fall.
If you wish to provide support for ongoing scholarship, please consider making a donation to the Thoreau Alliance. thoreaualliance.org/donate/