Du Bois-Mandela-Rodney Post-Doctoral Fellow
Tanisha C. Ford recently received her Ph.D. from the Department of History at Indiana University-Bloomington. Her dissertation, “Soul Generation: Radical Fashion, Beauty, and the Transnational Black Liberation Movement, 1954-1980,” explores the complex and often contradictory ways in which black women activists in the U.S. and Britain fought to (re)establish a modern black cultural-political identity that transgressed normative constructions of respectability and femininity. Tanisha’s res earch has been supported by various fellowships and grants including: the Organization of American Historians Diversity Fellowship, the University of London’s Institute for the Study of the Americas Visiting Dissertation Fellowship, Columbia College’s Center for Black Music Research Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson Travel Grant, and the Indiana University Department of History McNutt Professorship Fellowship. While in residence in DAAS, she will begin revising “Soul Generation” into a book-length manuscript and will teach a course on youth subcultures and resistance in the African Diaspora.
(email: tcford@umich.edu)
NCID Post-Doctoral Fellow
Jessica S. Welburn recently completed her graduate work in Sociology at Harvard University. Her research interests include race and ethnicity, cultural sociology, the sociology of the family and qualitative methodology. With funding from the National Science Foundation and the Harvard Real Estate Academic Initiative Jessica’s dissertation explored how African Americans who grew up in middle income households in New Jersey conceptualize their mobility prospects. While at the University of Michigan she will be conducting comparative work on African Americans, social mobility, and health outcomes in Detroit. In addition, Jessica is working with Professor Michèle Lamont (Harvard University) and an international team of researchers on a project comparing the antiracist strategies of stigmatized groups in the U.S., Brazil and Israel. Jessica earned her B.A. in sociology (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) in 2004 from the University of Pennsylvania. (email: jwelburn@umich.edu)
UMAPS
Christopher Muhoozi’s doctoral research is on pre-colonial and colonial history of the interlacustrine region in East Africa. His current focus is on Ankole in western Uganda. His research topic, “Negotiating Politics in Social Spaces in pre-colonial and colonial Ankole, Western Uganda”, explores the role of leisure spaces in the reproduction of political power. The research traces the changing role of these leisure spaces through the colonial period. Christopher teaches courses on the political history of Uganda and West African history. His research interests include power and politics in pre-colonial African societies; social change; and conflict, its trajectory and management in colonial and post-colonial Africa. His M.A. research was on migration and socioeconomic transformation in Ankole, Western Uganda 1901-1987. (email: cmuhoozi@umich.edu)
Sipokazi Sambumbu’s current research interests are primarily in heritage and the making of public pasts. Her doctoral research will investigate the nature of the authorized heritage discourse in South Africa. It will examine the constitution of the content of the heritage complex in South Africa, within a range of heritage institutions and organizations. The research will center on exploring how a particular highly institutionalized heritage discourse becomes conceptualized, configured and utilized within the operations of the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA), the National Heritage Council (NHC), national museums and the world heritage sites. Sipokazi’s previous research explored the social, public, visual histories of a place known as Ndabeni near Cape Town. Her recent publication is an article titled, Reading Visual Representations of ‘Ndabeni’ in the Public Realms of 21st Century Cape Town.
(email: sambumbu@umich.edu)
