The Hutchins Center for African & African American Research Announces its Thirteenth Class of W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute Fellows

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, has announced the 2025-2026 class of fellows.

“We are happy to welcome our next cohort of W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute Fellows,” says Gates. New to the Du Bois Research Institute Fellowship Program this year is the Black Film Project Fellowship. Led by Professor Gates and executive director Jacqueline Glover, the Black Film Project supports filmmakers who focus on Black history and culture in both narrative and documentary projects.

“We look forward to the new fellows’ stellar scholarly and creative work next academic year. The first anthology of Black sonnets, the first biography of a Black man enslaved in Canada, public housing and hiphop culture, a database of African music, a history of African American family storytelling, and the work of three filmmakers are among the compelling projects that the 2025-2026 Class of Fellows will bring to the W. E. B Du Bois Research Institute, housed in the Hutchins Center.”

The eighteen 2025-2026 W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute Fellows and their projects are as follows:

Charles Blow is a writer, journalist, and former Opinion columnist for The New York Times. In residence as the Inaugural Langston Hughes Fellow for the 2025-2026 academic year, Blow will be at work on two book-length projects.
Jordan Brown is a Doctoral Candidate in Ethnomusicology at Harvard University. In residence as a Dorothy Porter Fellow for the 2025-2026 academic year, Brown will be at work on the dissertation The Black Alternative: A Cultural and Musical Phenomenon, which establishes Black alternative music as a genre, cultural phenomenon, and refuge for intersectional minorities within the Black identity.
Rodney Carmichael is a Hiphop Writer, Correspondent, and Host at NPR, Washington, D.C. In residence as the Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellow for the 2025-2026 academic year, Carmichael will be at work on his book Boomin’ Systems, which explores the ways public housing has shaped Black communities and the music that arose from them.
Kendra Taira Field is Associate Professor of History at Tufts and Chief Historian of the 10 Million Names project, which is dedicated to recovering the names of the people African descent who were enslaved in America. In residence as a Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow for the 2025-2026 academic year, Field will be at work on the book The Stories We Tell, which traces the history of African American genealogy and family storytelling from the Middle Passage to the present.
Arlette Frund is Professor Emeritus, University of Tours. In residence as a Hutchins Family Foundation Fellow for the Spring 2026 term, Frund will be at work on her book Anna Julia Cooper and the Intellectual Promise of Literature, which explores Cooper’s writing in the context of contemporary conversations on race, gender, and education.
Cheryl Townsend Gilkes is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and African American Studies Emerita at Colby College. In residence as a Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow for the Spring 2026 term, Gilkes will be writing the book Mighty Causes Are Calling: A Personal Engagement with the Sociology of W. E. B. Du Bois, which is the author’s personal story of W. E. B. Du Bois and his work.
Justine McConnell is Reader in Comparative Literature and Classical Reception at King’s College London. In residence as a McMillan-Stewart Fellow for the Spring 2026 term, McConnell will be at work on the book Graeco-Roman Antiquity and the Women of the Harlem Renaissance, which focuses on Black women of the Harlem Renaissance and their dialogue with the ancient Mediterranean.
Jordan Taliha McDonald is a Doctoral Candidate in the English Department with a secondary field in History of Science at Harvard University. In residence as a Hutchins Family Foundation Fellow during the 2025-2026 academic year, McDonald will be at work on the dissertation Trust Fall: Betrayal, Complicit Rhetorics, and the Race-Science Fictions of Black Fidelity, which is an exploration of literary, scientific, and aesthetic ideas of complicity, betrayal, and fidelity that have been shaped by slavery, settler colonialism, and Blackness.
Charmaine Nelson is Provost Professor of Art History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In residence as a McMillan-Stewart Fellow for the 2025-2026 academic year, Nelson will be at work on the book Joe the Pressman: How an African-Born Man Refused a Life of Slavery in Canada, which explores the life and resistance of an African-born enslaved man in eighteenth-century British Quebec, Canada.
Sanele Ntshingana is Lecturer in African Languages at the University of Cape Town. In residence as the Mandela Fellow for the Fall 2025 term, Ntshingana will be at work on the book Theorizing Political Authority from Vernacular Concepts: The Political Discourse of isiXhosa-Speaking African Intellectuals from South Africa 1836-1914, which examines how isiXhosa-speaking African intellectuals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries theorized political authority using vernacular concepts.
Hollis Robbins is Special Advisor for Humanities at the University of Utah. In residence as a Hutchins Family Foundation Fellow for the 2025-2026 academic year, Robbins will be completing three book projects: Robert Hayden, a study of poetic influences; Black Sonnets, the first anthology of African American sonnets; and Hannah Crafts: Discovered! New Scholarship on The Bondwoman’s Narrative, an anthology of scholarship on Hannah Crafts.
Anna Deavere Smith is University Professor in Art and Public Policy at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. In residence as a Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow, Smith will be at work on the play Basil Biggs, which is the story of Smith’s ancestor, a conductor on the underground railroad.
Aurora Vergara-Figueroa is a sociologist and, until recently, the Minister of Education in Colombia. In residence as the Mark Mamolen Fellow for the 2025-2026 academic year, Vergara-Figueroa will be at work on the book Afro-Colombian Studies: Essential Readings. Vergara-Figueroa will translate from the Spanish to English this volume which focuses on the state of Afro-Colombian Studies and which Vergara-Figueroa co-edited with Alejandro de la Fuente and Angelica Sanchez Barona.
Edward Widmer is Distinguished Lecturer and Director of Humanities Lab, Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York. In residence as a W. E. B. Du Bois Fellow for the 2025-2026 academic year, Widmer will be at work on A Database of Early African and African-American Music that will be a platform for a global database of records relating to the survival of African music.

The inaugural Black Film Project Fellows are:

André Holland is an acclaimed actor, theater director, and film producer. He produced and starred in High Flying Bird, The Eddy, Exhibiting Forgiveness and the Sundance-premiered Love, Brooklyn. Known for his roles in Moonlight and Selma, Holland has also appeared on Broadway in Jitney and Joe Turner's Come and Gone. Holland will be working on a feature film inspired by instances of domestic terrorism.
Raven Jackson is an award-winning filmmaker, poet, and photographer. Her debut feature, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (2023), premiered at Sundance to critical acclaim. Jackson’s work has screened at prestigious festivals, including New York Film Festival and San Sebastián. She’s been recognized with nominations for a Film Independent Spirit Award, a Gotham Award for Breakthrough Director, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Jackson will be working on a feature film project.
Darol Olu Kae is a filmmaker from and based in Los Angeles. Kae crafts deeply personal cinematic experiences that disrupt conventional narrative forms through a dynamic treatment of sound and image. Kae will be at work on Message to the Messenger a hybrid documentary exploring the social and spiritual forces shaping jazz history through Art Blakey's enigmatic 1948 West African journey.