Hi. My name is Elizabeth Nelson, and I'm an Assistant Professor of Medical Humanities and Health Studies in the School of Liberal Arts. The Bans Community fellowship that I received in the 2019 2020 academic year supported my work with the Indiana Women's Prison History Project. The history project is a group of approximately ten student researchers who are either currently or formally incarcerated at the Indiana Women's Prison. I'm a professional historian, and since 2018, my role has been to work with the students as a mentor and collaborator. Helping to ensure that they have the resources that they need and that their research is at the highest level. The history project started at the prison in 2012. It was originally intended to be a one semester class where the students investigated the origins of the Indiana Women's Prison, which was founded in the 1870s as the first separate state run prison for women in the United States. But since that time, the researchers have expanded their scope, continued the research over many years to look at other institutions of confinement like religious run homes for so called fallen women and state institutions like the girls School and the school for feeble minded youth. Because the scholars have lived experience of incarceration, they've been able to ask truly incisive questions that have led to a real rewriting of this history. We have an edited volume that is set to appear in 2023 with the New Press that looks at the history of women's incarceration in Indiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And which provides a needed critical perspective on the gender violence and economic exploitation that is inherent to our prison system. As a higher education program, the history project was initially about fostering academic skills, and several of our members have pursued additional education, including graduate degrees after their release from prison. But ultimately, what the group has become over time is a kind of collective, a group of women who are resources for each other and for the community. Members of the history project like Michelle Daniel Jones and Anastasia Schmid, for example, have become some of the leading national voices in the critique of mass incarceration and in advocating for the well being of currently and formally incarcerated people.