UW’s Misty Springer Receives 2026 Stewart Family Serviceship Fellowship

Misty Springer, a second-year University of Wyoming student from Garden Valley, Idaho, pursuing an English Ph.D. in the public humanities, has received the 2026 Stewart Family Serviceship Fellowship. The award will support her project to preserve the culture of the !Xun and Khwe San communities in Platfontein, South Africa.

The Stewart Family Serviceship Fellowship is funded by the Stewart family of Sheridan, in honor of their late parents, Clyde and Jerrine Stewart, who believed in helping their community. The award supports students with projects that help people and solve real-world problems.

Springer’s project focuses on preserving the knowledge and traditions of the !Xun and Khwe San people. Instead of deciding everything herself, she works with the community to decide what stories and practices should be preserved.

“This work is led by the community, not by me,” Springer says. “They decide which stories are told; who should be involved; and what matters most to preserve. I’m there to support that process.”

Springer first connected with the community in 2007 while serving in the Peace Corps. She later worked with a nonprofit and helped create a theater production titled “Son of the Wind,” which told the story of the San people and toured across South Africa with local actors.

Her current project includes a podcast with interviews of elders; a creative radio drama version of “Son of the Wind”; and conversations with young people about their hopes and challenges. She also is building a digital archive to save stories and cultural knowledge, which is especially important for cultures with an oral language tradition.  

“The elders who lived as hunter-gatherers are passing on,” Springer says. “If their knowledge isn’t recorded now, it could be lost.”

Springer plans on training young community members to interview elders and will pay them for their work. She also is funding workshops led by elder artisans to teach traditional jewelry-making using ostrich eggshells, helping preserve skills and create economic opportunities.

“This is about more than preservation,” Springer says. “It’s about creating pathways for sustainability and opportunity.”

Her work also forms the basis of a new nonprofit organization she founded in January, which will use the stories, research and media to apply for more funding to help the community in the long term.
 

“I would not have taken the step of founding SanDPO (San Development and Preservation Organization) if I did not have a Masters of Public Administration from here at UW,” Springer says of the nongovernmental organization she created in January to serve the !Xun and Khwe San tribes of Platfontein, South Africa.

Springer’s research looks at how to work ethically with Indigenous communities and respect different ways of knowing.

“I want to think creatively about what knowledge is and who gets to define it,” she says. “This work is about listening, learning and respecting perspectives that don’t always fit within Western academic frameworks.”

Nancy Small -- Springer’s adviser and a UW professor of English and public humanities -- who leads the Re-Storying the West project, is proud of the forward-thinking project.

“Misty’s work is globally inspired, globally designed and globally impactful while demonstrating the highest caliber of ethics,” Small says. “Her work in South Africa is exemplary of what we encourage UW students to pursue.”

The award will help Springer continue this work and maintain her relationship with the community.

“This funding represents the beginning of something bigger,” she says. “It’s about building trust, continuing relationships and creating something meaningful that will last beyond my Ph.D.”

“Through the support of the Stewart Award, Springer’s project to work together with the !Xun and Khwe San people and creation of a new nonprofit provides a structure for a sustainable partnership that will help preserve cultural knowledge and support the Platfontein community,” says Jean Garrison, the Clyde E. and Jerrine N. Stewart Family Professor in Public Service, who oversees the Stewart Serviceship Fellowship in the School of Politics, Public Affairs and International Studies. “This latest project is just another example of the profound impact that recipients of this award have had in Wyoming and around the world.”

Springer also brings her knowledge and expertise to her work with the UW Wallop Civic Engagement Program’s Wyoming Youth Resilience Project that looks at youth perspectives on opportunities and barriers they see to education, employment and community resilience.  

To learn more about the Stewart Family Serviceship Fellowship, email Garrison at garrison@uwyo.edu.