Maria Sachiko Cecire is a program officer for Higher Learning, where she leads portfolios including Digital Humanities and Digital Justice, Global Academic Freedom, Higher Education in Prison, and Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies, among others. She represents the Mellon Foundation on the Humanity AI Steering Committee and several higher education funder collaboratives. 

Maria came to Mellon from Bard College, where she was an associate professor of literature and the founding director of the Center for Experimental Humanities. This interdisciplinary initiative focuses on how technologies mediate the human experience and brings together collaborators from across the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences, including in local communities.  Maria’s research addresses digital and media studies, medieval literature and its afterlives, youth culture, and the role of the humanities in contemporary society. She holds an AB in English language and literature from the University of Chicago and an MSt in English medieval studies and a DPhil in English from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.