Graduate Student Opportunities

The Center for African & African American Studies offers award, fellowship, and scholarship opportunities for faculty and graduate students conducting research and creative work in African studies, African American studies, and/or African diaspora studies.

Graduate Student Award and Fellowship Funding Opportunities 

  • The Center for African & African American Studies Graduate Student Fellowship Program: The Center for African & African American Studies Graduate Student Fellowship Program (aka the “CAAAS Grad Fellows Program”) provides support and scholarly community for 񱦵 graduate students conducting research and creative work in African studies, African American studies, and African diaspora studies. CAAAS Grad Fellows receive a stipend and are eligible for CAAAS Grad Student Awards, the CAAAS Dissertation Completion Fellowship, the CAAAS's Alice Cleora Reeves Dissertation Award, and the CAAAS’s Jessica Bertram Womanist Innovation Award. CAAAS Grad Student Fellows participate in, and contribute to, several interdisciplinary and intersectional research “Lunch & Learn” events (at least two each semester) co-sponsored by the Center for African & African American Studies (CAAAS) and CU Libraries. Currently only grad students who have received CAAAS Grad Student Summer Fellowships are eligible for the CAAAS Grad Fellows Program. For more information on the CAAAS Grad Student Summer Fellowship Program, see here.
  • The Center for African & African American Studies Graduate Student Summer Fellowships: The Center for African & African American Studies Graduate Student Summer Fellowships (aka the “CAAAS Grad Student Summer Fellowships”) are for 񱦵 graduate students conducting research and creative work in African studies, African American studies, and African diaspora studies who do not already receive university-sponsored or external funding (in any amount) during the summer months. The $7,500 stipend will be paid out in $2,500 payments in June, July, and August. All 񱦵 graduate students with demonstrable research and creative work in African studies, African American studies, and/or African diaspora studies are eligible to apply.
  • The Center for African & African American Studies Graduate Student Research & Creative Work Awards: The purpose of the CAAAS Graduate Student Research & Creative Work Awards (aka “CAAAS Grad Student Awards”) are to assist 񱦵 graduate students with their research and creative work in African studies, African American studies, and African diaspora studies. CAAAS Grad Student Awards provide modest funding for a variety of projects. For example, CAAAS Grad Student Awards can be used for research materials, creative work assistance, travel for research and creative work purposes, conference presentations, exhibitions, performances, etc. Partial funding is possible, and most awards are between $1,500 and $2,500. The CAAAS will consider funding up to $3,500 for international travel based on airfare and lodging costs. There may also be instances when domestic research travel requiring a longer stay than a traditional conference may also be funded for a higher amount (but no greater than $3,000).
  • The Center for African and African American Studies Dissertation Completion Fellowship: The Center for African & African American Studies (CAAAS) Dissertation Completion Fellowship provides one semester of full funding during either the Fall or Spring semester. Support will consist of a stipend equal to a 50% GPTI appointment paid out in monthly increments. Up to five dissertation hours of tuition, mandatory fees, and coverage under the student gold health plan are also included. All 񱦵 doctoral students with demonstrable research and creative work in African studies, African American studies, and/or African diaspora studies are eligible to apply.
  • The Center for African and African American Studies’ Alice Cleora Reeves Endowed Dissertation Award: The Center for African & African American Studies’ Alice Cleora Reeves Endowed Dissertation Award is for doctoral candidates from any campus-wide program, department, or college who are active participants in the Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS) at the 񱦵. Expenditures from the Reeves Dissertation Award can be used for, but are not limited to, stipends, support for research, creative work, and other activities that support students’ doctoral dissertation development, and other costs related to students’ dissertation completion.
  • Jessica Bertram Womanist Innovation and Pioneer Award: This award is established in 2024 by S. N. Nyeck, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Political Economy and Africana Studies at CU Bouler in honor of Jessica Bertram from the Department of Dance at 񱦵 for her womanist MFA thesis and performance entitled "Homecoming: Returning to Love (Of the Self and Of the Folk).

2024 - 2025 CAAAS Grad Student Award Winners

Trevor Egerton

PhD Student, Department of History, College of Arts & Sciences
CAAAS Graduate Fellows

Trevor Egerton is a fourth-year PhD student in the 񱦵’s History Department. His research focuses on the intersections between race and outdoor recreation in the twentieth century American South. Particularly, he uses a set of forty Black-only state parks scattered throughout the region to better understand the connections between the development of outdoor recreation and the Black Freedom Struggle between 1935 and 1965. Trevor is originally from Austin, Texas and graduated in 202...

Tyreis Hunte

MFA Student, Department of Theatre & Dance, College of Arts & Sciences
CAAAS Graduate Fellows

Tyreis Hunte is a Creole Amazônido interdisciplinary artist and creative director birthed in Guyana, South America. Their work is embedded in the understanding and the connections of global indigenous cultures and their embodied philosophies. Tyreis is a Davis World Scholar and alum of the United World College, Changshu China, receiving their Bachelor of Arts in Dance and Asian Studies with focus on Movement Therapy from St. Olaf College.  Tyreis is keen on the historic as well as contemporary contributions...

Ubochi Igbokwe

PhD Student, Department of Musicology, College of Music
CAAAS Graduate Fellows

Ubochi Igbokwe is a fourth-year doctoral student studying Ethnomusicology here at 񱦵. She is an instructor and teaching assistant at the College of Music and a Graduate Fellow at the Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS). At the American Music Research Center (AMRC),her scope of duties included cataloging the digital objects associated with Grauman Theater Scores, Glenn Miller Collections, and importation of digital objects related to popular music through the CU World Cat. Her res...

Idowu Odeyemi

PhD Student, Department of Philosophy, College of Arts & Sciences
CAAAS Graduate Fellows

Idowu Odeyemi is a PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy at the 񱦵. His research and teaching centers on epistemology, moral philosophy, and social and political philosophy. He is an alumnus of the Open Student Workshop at the University of Oxford. His essay "Living in America, Leaving Nigeria" was recognized as one of the 18 notable essays by a Nigerian in 2023. The philosophical issues he tends to focus on are non-idealized, particularly focusing on how to morally evalu...

Olumide Ojediran

PhD Student, Department of Anthropology, College of Arts & Sciences
CAAAS Graduate Fellows

Olumide Ojediran is a PhD candidate in Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at the 񱦵. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Archaeology from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, in 2019, and subsequently completed a joint Master of Science in Quaternary Geology, Prehistory, and Bioarchaeology at the Natural History Museum of Paris, and Universität Rovira i Virgili, Spain, in 2023. As an Africanist archaeologist, Olumide is dedicated to advancing zooarchaeology within Nigeri...

Success Osayi

PhD Student, Department of Journalism, College of Media, Communication and Information (CMCI)
CAAAS Graduate Fellows

Success is Nigerian. He is a PhD student in the Department of Journalism. His research interests revolve around the interrelationship between socio-political power dynamics (especially at the macro level) and the media industry in developing democracies, with the expectation that his work will significantly contribute to our understanding of how these dynamics can shape media representation (in terms of workforce makeup) and portrayal of issues, and how such representation and portrayal can in turn contribu...

Nandi Pointer

PhD Student, Department of Media Studies, College of Media, Communication and Information (CMCI)2024 - 2025 CAAAS Alice Cleora Reeves Endowed Dissertation Fellow
CAAAS Graduate FellowsCAAAS Doctoral Fellows

Nandi Pointer is a doctoral candidate in the College of Media, Communication and Information at the University of Colorado, Boulder advised by Dr. Sandra Ristovska. Her multimodal dissertation, which includes the completion of a documentary film, focuses on Black American male identity formation and its rearticulation in Black expats. She holds a Master of Journalism from the University of California at Berkeley, where she produced her first award-winning documentary Highway of Dreams. The film investigates...

Reya Roussel

J.D. Candidate, University of Colorado Law School
CAAAS Graduate Fellows

Reya Roussel is a third-year law student from Arlington, Texas pursuing a Civil Rights and Racial Justice Certificate and an Entrepreneurial Law Certificate at the University of Colorado Law School. She also serves as a Senior Fellow with the Byron White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law, where she helps conduct legal research and coordinate educational events related to a wide range of topics in Constitutional Law. She holds a bachelor’s degree in African American Studies and a minor cert...

2023 - 2024 CAAAS Grad Student Award Winners

Joseph Benjamin Burney

M.A Student, College of Arts and Sciences, Leeds School of Business

J. Benjamin Burney is a Black American renaissance artist whose multidisciplinary arts practice creates immersive installations that sit at the cross roads between myth and life. After receiving a BFA in film studies, and having a short stint in the NFL, Benjamin is now earning a dual Master’s degree in Fine Art and Business from 񱦵. Benjamin is also the founder of “Z Art House” a creative design studio that offers Creative Direction and Project Management to businesses and artists to achieve its mi...

BK Clapham

PhD Student, Department of English, College of Arts and Science

BK Clapham (he/they) is a PhD student with research and teaching interests in literature of the African Diaspora, Black internationalism, multiracial and mutlti-ethnic Hemispheric solidarities, Black LGBTQ fiction, and queer theory and cultural production.  They have a B.A. in Ethnic Studies from The University of Texas at Austin and M.A. in Journalism from the City University of New York, Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. He is also interested in underground print cultures and public humanities....

Antoinette Kendrick

PhD Student, Department of Media Studies, College of Media, Communication and Information (CMCI)

Antoinette Kendrick received her bachelor’s degree in psychology and her master's degree in social work (MSW) from the University of Oklahoma. She plans to use her vast knowledge in social work to inform her interdisciplinary research and approach to media literacy for youth. She is interested in investigating the social impact of exposure to various forms of graphic media content across age groups and analyzing the disproportionate harm that vulnerable populations face in today’s digital landscape. Her ult...

Blessed Ngoe

PhD, Department of Communication, College of Media, Communication and Information (CMCI)2023 - 2024 CAAAS Dissertation Completion Fellow
CAAAS Doctoral Fellows
Blessed.Ngoe@colorado.edu

Blessed E. Ngoe is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication at the 񱦵. His research interests include language and social interaction in invisible political and social organizations, organizational collaboration, and African epistemologies. During his time at 񱦵, Blessed has been researching communication strategies that communities in conflict areas use to mobilize resources to address urgent conflict-generated needs. Part of his research commitment has be...

Success Osayi

PhD Student, Department of Journalism, College of Media, Communication and Information (CMCI)
CAAAS Graduate Fellows

Success is Nigerian. He is a PhD student in the Department of Journalism. His research interests revolve around the interrelationship between socio-political power dynamics (especially at the macro level) and the media industry in developing democracies, with the expectation that his work will significantly contribute to our understanding of how these dynamics can shape media representation (in terms of workforce makeup) and portrayal of issues, and how such representation and portrayal can in turn contribu...

Nandi Pointer

PhD Student, Department of Media Studies, College of Media, Communication and Information (CMCI)2024 - 2025 CAAAS Alice Cleora Reeves Endowed Dissertation Fellow
CAAAS Graduate FellowsCAAAS Doctoral Fellows

Nandi Pointer is a doctoral candidate in the College of Media, Communication and Information at the University of Colorado, Boulder advised by Dr. Sandra Ristovska. Her multimodal dissertation, which includes the completion of a documentary film, focuses on Black American male identity formation and its rearticulation in Black expats. She holds a Master of Journalism from the University of California at Berkeley, where she produced her first award-winning documentary Highway of Dreams. The film investigates...

Allan Tellis

PhD Student, Department of Political Science, College of Arts and Science

I am currently a doctoral candidate in my fourth year as a student in the Political Science Department. As a political theorist, I attempt to explore the relationship between power, liberty, and domination. I routinely argue that in order for liberty to be maximally enjoyed, power must be decentralized. I suggest that it is fundamentally the decentralization of power that disrupts the emergence of relationships of dependence, and thus, the possibility of domination. The contemporary political crisis, I sugg...