AfroAm Alums Accepted into top PhD Programs

Indy Davis has accepted admission into the PhD Program in History at Princeton University. She is a recipient of a President's Fellowship as well as a grant from the Center for Human Values at Princeton. Indy is originally from Amsterdam in the Netherlands and moved to the United States to attend the W.E.B. Du Bois Department to pursue her interest in the history of race and the law. During her time here, she became particularly interested in studying the nineteenth century and wrote her thesis about guardianship laws that applied to free people of color in the nineteenth-century South. At Princeton, her research focus will be on African-American and Legal History. She further hopes to explore the influences of Dutch colonial legal practice on the experiences of African-Americans in New Netherland. In the Du Bois Department, Indy received the Shirley Graham Du Bois Award for her senior thesis, "Guarding the Borders of Freedom: The Legal Guardianship of Free People of Color in the Nineteenth-Century South."

Sofia Meadows-Muriel (they/she) is delighted to announce that they accepted admission into the PhD program in Africana Studies at Cornell University. They are a recipient of the Sage Fellowship at Cornell, which will support their studies for the next five years. Sofia graduated from UMass Amherst in 2022 with a dual degree in Afro-American Studies and Social Thought and Political Economy. In the Du Bois Department, they received the Shirley Graham Du Bois Prize for their senior thesis, "The Appeal for an Accessible Future." Currently, Sofia is an afterschool program advisor and teacher in residency at a Boston Public High School. She is also currently the Director of Partnerships at Unity Circles, a small nonprofit that practices restorative and transformative justice with those most impacted by carceral conditions. She wants to thank the department for the love, support and guidance they have received, especially as a transfer student in 2021.

Carolyn Parker-Fairbain is overjoyed to share that they have been accepted to Boston University’s American and New England Studies PhD program beginning in fall 2023. They are also the recipient of a prestigious GRS Alumni Fellowship to support their studies at BU. They thank all those in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies who offered integral support throughout the exploration and application process, especially Anne Kerth, Traci Parker, and Britt Rusert. They are grateful for the time of those professors, mentors, and friends who offered counsel and support, including Brittany Frederick, Liv Haynes, Sofia Meadows-Muriel, Savita Maharaj, and Callum LaFrance. Carolyn graduated with a BA in both Afro-American Studies and a minor in History and Theater. Parker-Fairbain began their post-grad life by moving to Vermont with their partner. They continued work in arts programming, having interned at the UMass University Museum of Contemporary Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, by producing ArtPop with the Fine Arts Center. That spring they began a new journey working on a local organic farm. At the same time, they pursued an internship at W. W. Norton and Co. Summer amongst the green mountains offered time to reflect and space to explore curiosities, especially through soil and scrolls (audiobooks). This past fall they began writing for a local newspaper while still at the farm. Now, at the start of the new planting season, they are preparing for the journey ahead and celebrating with those who brought them to this point.