The American Council of Learned Societies Announces the 2021 African Humanities Program Postdoctoral Fellows

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) today named 44 African scholars as African Humanities Program (AHP) Fellows for 2021. They join an international network of 11 previous cohorts of awardees in this program supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and administered by ACLS. Since 2008, AHP has worked to reinvigorate the humanities on the continent through fellowship competitions and related activities in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda.

The 2021 AHP Fellows represent a wide range of academic institutions in five sub-Saharan African countries. Their research topics include digital gaming practices and skills appropriation among Ghanaian youth; time and nature in the poetry of Niyi Osundare; the intersection between spirituality, sound, and Blackness in contemporary African art; and the history of female judges in the Nigerian judiciary.

“We are excited to see the range of diverse topics and approaches proposed by these impressive scholars,” said ACLS President Joy Connolly. “The Carnegie/ACLS African Humanities Program has now supported nearly 500 fellows – a transformative network that provides concrete support for humanistic inquiry in these five countries and helps circulate scholarly work around the world.”

AHP sustains early career scholars with $20,000 stipends that support an academic year free from teaching and other duties to focus on revising dissertations for publication or to advance their first major research project after the PhD. Fellows are also eligible for additional benefits such as residential stays at African institutes of advanced study for writing and research, manuscript development workshops, and publication support.