Public Humanities Fellows 2023-2024

Folarin Ajibade is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History. He specializes in African and African Diaspora History, with broad thematic interests in social history, economic history, and the history of urban mass/popular culture. His dissertation is an interdisciplinary study of the commercialization of everyday gambling in Nigeria from colonial to recent times. He moonlights as a radio broadcaster and DJ.

Robert Bell is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, and History at New York University. His dissertation examines the role of American financial, administrative, and agricultural advisers in shaping Iranian economic development policy between 1911 and 1957. In doing so, the dissertation engages with the history of Iranian state-formation, political-economy, and economic thought to reveal how Iranian political actors adopted, adapted, and contested American renderings of development during the period. Robert’s research has received support from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, the Eisenhower Foundation, and the American Institute of Iranian Studies, among other institutional sources. In addition to his academic accomplishments, Robert has been selected as a 2023-2034 Public Humanities Fellow. In this role, he is partnering with the National 9/11 Memorial & Museum to promote public outreach and assist with exhibition curation.

Tierney Brown is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at NYU. Her research explores the intersection between religion and conservation practices in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. As heritage becomes an internationally recognizable framework, how do particular institutions care for the unique histories and objects in their stewardship? Tierney's passion for public humanities stems from community collaboration projects at the National Museum of Natural History (SI), Machik, and the Endangered Language Alliance. A graduate of the Culture and Media program at NYU, in 2019 she made a short documentary film Color, spending time with the artists at Kremer Pigments in NYC who produce unique paints from raw materials. She also uses digital images, analog film, and sketching in her fieldwork to engage the rich visual impressions and limits of circulation. Her graduate work was supported by an NSF GRFP fellowship, and she has presented her research across the US, Canada, and Bhutan. As a 2023-2024 Public Humanities Fellow she is excited to work with the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art and community stakeholders on the upcoming exhibition of materials from the Pushtimarg tradition.

Juan Manuel Ávila Conejo is a literary critic, philosopher, architect, and Ph.D candidate in Comparative Literature at New York University. His research interests include the literatures and philosophy of Latin America & the Caribbean, the Francophone world, the Soviet Union, and the Global South; as well as Marxism, Continental philosophy, environmental & eco-criticism, critical theory, film, visual art, architecture, and urban studies. His dissertation, tentatively titled “The Aesthetics of the Plantationocene,” examines plantation literature and art from Costa Rica in the first half of the twentieth century through the framework of critical political ecology. The study focuses on the representation of nature in United Fruit Company's visual and literary works, as well as the works of two Costa Rican revolutionaries, Carmen Lyra and Carlos Luis Fallas; and argues that the struggles for land and labor rights in the plantation zone were crucial to the development of Costa Rican environmental consciousness. He has worked as an architect independently in his native Costa Rica and for Gensler in California. As a 2023-2024 Public Humanities Fellow, he works at the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center.

Leonard Cortana (Guadeloupe/France) is a Ph.D. Candidate in Cinema Studies at NYU and an Affiliate Researcher at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. His research focuses on the transnational circulation of narratives about racial justice and activist movements between Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, France and the US with a special emphasis on the memorialization of political assassinations, the spread of the legacy of assassinated anti-racist activists and the online protection of frontline activists. Prior to NYU, he conducted several artistic and educational projects with non-profits and UN agencies. He became a Trainer for European Commission Youth Program projects and designed methodologies in theatre and storytelling for social inclusion for youth workers. Cortana is also a documentary filmmaker. His last documentary Marielle's Legacy Will Not Die, follows activist movements spreading the intersectional legacy of Afro-Brazilian activist and politician Marielle Franco in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 2023, he became the curator of the Baobab Film Festival - Recife's Afro film festival (Brazil) and the international advisor for the Quibdo Africa Film Festival (Colombia). As a 2023-2024 Public Humanities Fellow, he works at the Museum of the City of New York.

Alliya Dagman is a doctoral candidate at the Department of English, New York University. Her research examines literary cartographies that trace exploitative textual and material (re)productions of space. She is interested in poets’ strategies of documenting historical and ongoing violence, and the pedagogical affordances of poetic material. A 2023 NYU College of Arts & Science Outstanding Teaching Award winner, she aspires to create classroom environments in which collaborative, dynamic thinking becomes enjoyable and rewarding for her students. As a 2023-2024 Public Humanities Fellow, she develops resources for professional development, curricular innovation and program change in higher education at the Modern Language Association.

Zingha Foma is a passionate scholar and designer, currently pursuing a Ph.D. in History at New York University. Her dissertation focuses on the impact of the transatlantic slave trade on the Gold Coast during the eighteenth century, exploring how imported textiles transformed fashion and industry in the region. With over a decade of experience in designing African clothing and working with artisans in West Africa, Zingha is committed to preserving and celebrating African fashion and dress. She shares her knowledge and experiences through her blog and social media sites, which serve as a platform for exploring the intersection of fashion, culture, and history. Zingha is also a 2022-2023 Public Humanities Fellow working at Black Gotham Experience (BGX).

Sylvia Gorelick is a writer, poet, and translator based in New York City. Her translations include Stéphane Mallarmé’s The Book (Exact Change, 2018) and Marc de Launay’s Nietzsche and Race (University of Chicago Press, 2023). Gorelick has curated poetry events at institutions including the Brooklyn Rail and Lévy Gorvy Gallery and has collaborated on a wide range of publications and exhibitions. She is currently a PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature at New York University. Her dissertation, Insurgent Wandering and the Bounds of the City, argues that 20th-century women creators (poets, filmmakers, and writers) active in and between New York, Havana, and Paris forged revolutionary feminisms by way of wandering, both intellectual and geographic.

Tony Haouam is a joint PhD candidate at the Institute of French Studies and in the Department of French Literature, Thought and Culture. His research focuses on the intersection of race and humor in contemporary France. His dissertation, “Laughing at Color Blindness: Race, Humor and Spectatorship in Contemporary France,” examines stand-up comedians’ aesthetic work in order to get at the subtlety of the corporeal, sound, performative, and rhetorical modes through which race and racialization operate in ‘colorblind’ France. His work has been published in L’Esprit Créateur, European Stages and Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté.  Prior to NYU, Tony earned a B.A. in French Literature and an M.A. in Communication Studies from La Sorbonne, spent a semester at Galatasaray University in Istanbul and then worked for a year as a Fulbright teaching assistant at Bard College. He worked as a documentary translator at ABC, as a race and gender consultant to support LGBTQ+ asylum-seekers in Greece and served as general director of UNESCO’s Week of Sound. As a 2023-2024 Public Humanities “Academic Publishing and Journal Fellow,” Tony will be supporting the editorial team of Berghahn Books and the academic journal French Politics, Culture & Society.

Faith Lazar is a PhD candidate in American Studies at New York University. Her research delves into the history of far-right paramilitary movements and the expansion of the federal security state in the United States during the late 20th century. Additionally, she is an expert fellow at the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism.

Yana Lysenko is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature and Russian & Slavic Studies at New York University. Her dissertation focuses on the concept of urban identity in twentieth and twenty-first century Ukrainian literature, cinema and media. Focusing specifically on the Ukrainian city of Odesa, she observes how local Odesan identity engages and exceeds historical parameters of ethnicity and nationhood, which allows for discussions of historical imperialism, literary and linguistic decolonization, and contemporary questions of Ukrainian identity. She has participated in research projects and fieldwork in Ukraine, France, and Spain and will be presenting her work this upcoming year at MLA and the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). As a 2023-2024 Public Humanities Fellow, she will be applying her interests in Ukrainian and Eastern European studies to pursue a project at the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation.

Augusta Thomson is a PhD candidate in Department of Anthropology at New York University (NYU). Her dissertation examines preservation politics along the Camino de Santiago—a rapidly developing, medieval Catholic pilgrimage route that transects the north of Spain. Prior to matriculating at NYU, Augusta conducted participatory anthropological research on pilgrimage and pastoralist communities in Tibet, Mongolia, and Ladakh—work that she remains committed to deepening through her insights on pilgrimage and mobility in the West. A graduate of NYU’s Certificate Program in Culture and Media, trained in video production through Tisch School of the Arts, Augusta is an award-winning documentary and experimental filmmaker; her films, most notably, Nine-Story Mountain, challenge assumptions about place, movement, and the natural world. She is the recipient of two Fulbright pre-doctoral research grants—one in India and one in Spain; and has received funding from the Council for European Studies, Society for Visual Anthropology with the Robert Lemelson Foundation, the Kalliopeia Foundation, and the Royal Geographical Society, among others. Augusta has written for a variety of public-facing journalistic outlets, such as The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, Elle Canada, Women in the World, the New Internationalist, Geographical Magazine, Religion & Politics, SAPIENS, and Al Jazeera English—work that she sees as fundamental to breaking down barriers to knowledge access within academia. She remains particularly dedicated to empowering diverse womxn scholars and caretakers, who might not otherwise have access to higher educational opportunities. As a Public Humanities Fellow with the Henry Luce Foundation, Augusta will take on a variety of roles, supporting the foundation’s scholar programs and outreach initiatives.