Graduate student Kelly Kean was selected to attend the University of Virginia and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts' competitive Summer Institute. This year's focus will be the Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry. The program allows students to "study the region's economics, social and cultural history through a multidisciplinary approach that includes current methods of research, interpretation, preservation, and analysis of material culture.

Over the course of the institute, Kelly looks forward incorporating methods from material history to understand expressions of identity through acquisition, preparation, and presentation of foodstuffs in the Lowcountry. As well, she seeks to further expand the incorporation of the political and cultural meanings of material culture into the intersection of local and Atlantic foodways.