Introducing DGS Mellon Fellows (2022-2025)
The World Studies Interdisciplinary Project (WSIP) is pleased to announce the names of UMass Amherst faculty and graduate students from HFA and SBS chosen as Mellon Fellows for 2022-25. Supported by a grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Fellows will collaboratively create a Decolonial Global Studies (DGS) Graduate Certificate Program, which has been a long-developing vision of WSIP co-directors Laura Doyle, Professor of English, and Mwangi wa Gĩthĩnji, Associate Professor of Economics. The interdisciplinary, co-taught courses of the Certificate will highlight the collective histories stricken from view by colonialist, androcentric narratives and they will center the perspectives and sustaining legacies that support justice struggles in the world today.
Selected through a competitive call for proposals, the Mellon Fellows represent ten departments in HFA and SBS, including four faculty teaching teams and ten PhD students. In 2022-23, Fellows participated in a yearlong Reading and Rethinking seminar in which they cultivated interdisciplinary thinking, learning, and teaching practices as they collaboratively designed the DGS curriculum and courses. Courses will be piloted in 2023-24, and the Certificate will be launched officially in Fall 2024. The program will also include future PhD fellowships and short internships. To learn more, visit the WSIP Mellon Award for Grad Certificate Program and explore more of the World Studies Interdisciplinary Project (WSIP) website.