# Current Fellows ## 2025-2026 Fellows [### Charles Blow ](/people/charles-blow)2025-2026 Langston Hughes Fellow Charles Blow is a writer, journalist, and former Opinion columnist for The New York Times . ![Charles Blow](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-08/blow_charles-hdsht-7132023%20%281%29.png?h=5f8b6480&itok=lfrreSnk) [### Jordan Brown ](/people/jordan-brown)2025-2026 Dorothy Porter Fellow Jordan R. Brown is an ethnomusicology doctoral candidate at Harvard University with a secondary field in African and African American Studies. Her current research interests include Black underground politics, Black feminist theory and queer theory, Black... ![Jordan R. Brown](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-07/Brown-J-photo.jpg?h=4d106fed&itok=dHuMPAhm) [### Rodney Carmichael ](/people/rodney-carmichael)2025-2026 Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellow Rodney Carmichael is a storyteller, journalist and cultural critic, covering hip-hop at NPR Music since 2017. He often works at the intersection of race and inequality, telling stories across mediums that combine reporting and criticism to spotlight the... ![Rodney Carmichael](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-07/Carmichael-R-photo-%281%29.jpg?itok=ZIL26jn7) [### Kendra Taira Field ](/people/kendra-taira-field)2025-2026 Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow Dr. Kendra Taira Field is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center for Public History at Tufts University. Field is the author of Growing Up with the Country: Family, Race, and Nation after the Civil War (Yale, 2018), which traced her own... ![Kendra Taira Field](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-07/Field-K-photo-%281%29.jpg?itok=WCftmENM) [### Arlette Frund ](/people/arlette-frund)Spring 2026 Hutchins Family Foundation Fellow Arlette Frund is Professor Emerita at the University of Tours, France. Her scholarly and teaching specializations are in African American literature and culture. She is the author of Phillis Wheatley et Olaudah Equiano: Figures pionnières de la diaspora... ![Arlette Frund](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-10/Photo-AFrund.jpg?h=b4cc528c&itok=s8SK4pzJ) [### Cheryl Townsend Gilkes ](/people/cheryl-townsend-gilkes)Spring 2026 Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow Cheryl Townsend Gilkes is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and African American Studies Emerita at Colby College. ![Cheryl Townsend Gilkes](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-07/CTGSPA064206_0.jpg?itok=yW6oY9n9) [### André Holland ](/people/andre-holland)2025-2026 Black Film Project Fellow 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... ![André Holland](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-08/nuCGQTED_400x400.jpg?itok=gft-eU7g) [### Raven Jackson ](/people/raven-jackson)2025-2026 Black Film Project Fellow Raven Jackson is an award-winning filmmaker, poet, and photographer from Tennessee. Her work often explores landscapes of indefinable experiences and emotions, intimacy, connection, and the body’s relationship to nature. Recently nominated for a Film... ![Raven Jackson](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-07/IMG_5256.jpeg?h=88fb93cd&itok=dTPW1PcE) [### Darol Olu Kae ](/people/darol-olu-kae)2025-2026 Black Film Project Fellow Darol Olu Kae is an award-winning filmmaker based in Los Angeles. His work has gained international acclaim, showcased at renowned venues like the Locarno, Sundance, and SXSW Film Festivals, as well as BAM, Film at Lincoln Center, MoMA, and The Geffen... ![Darol Olu Kae](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-07/Kae%20D%20photo%202.jpg?itok=phy8PfD9) [### Justine McConnell ](/people/justine-mcconnell)Spring 2026 McMillan-Stewart Fellow Justine McConnell is Reader in Comparative Literature and Classical Reception at King’s College London. Her research focuses on African diaspora literature of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, on ancient Greek literature, and on the... ![Justine McConnell](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-07/McConnell%20J%20photo.jpg?itok=7sh-S2RF) [### Jordan Taliha McDonald ](/people/jordan-taliha-mcdonald)2025-2026 Hutchins Family Foundation Fellow Jordan Taliha McDonald is a Doctoral Candidate in the English Department with a secondary field in History of Science at Harvard University. Her scholarship primarily examines how literary, scientific, and aesthetic ideas of complicity and fidelity were... ![Jordan Taliha McDonald](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-08/jmcd.jpg?itok=dd6PGf-n) [### Charmaine A. Nelson ](/people/charmaine-nelson)2025-2026 McMillan-Stewart Fellow Charmaine A. Nelson was appointed a Provost Professor of Art History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2022 where she founded the Slavery North Initiative. Her nine books include The Color of Stone: Sculpting the Black Female Subject in... ![Charmaine A. Nelson](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-09/MeghanTanseyWhitton--19.jpg?itok=c6rd9zv2) [### Sanele Ntshingana ](/people/sanele-ntshingana)Fall 2025 Mandela Fellow Sanele Ntshingana is a lecturer in the African Languages section of the School of Languages and Literatures at the University of Cape Town, with over five years of experience in the higher education sector. His PhD research explores how isiXhosa-speaking... ![Sanele Ntshingana in front of a brick building](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-11/IMG_0958.jpg?h=44a94ef7&itok=ql3yYU11) [### Hollis Robbins ](/people/hollis-robbins)2025-2026 Hutchins Family Foundation Fellow Hollis Robbins is Professor of English and Special Advisor for Humanities Diplomacy at the University of Utah, where she was Dean of Humanities from 2022-2024. Previously she was Dean of Arts & Humanities at Sonoma State University (2018-2022) and... ![Hollis Robbins](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-11/thumbnail_HR22copy.jpg?itok=eMEqr6Kj) [### Anna Deavere Smith ](/people/anna-deavere-smith)2025-2026 Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow Anna Deavere Smith is University Professor in Art and Public Policy at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. ![Anna Deavere Smith](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-08/Anna%20Deavere%20Smith%20Headshot.jpeg.preset.square.jpeg?itok=QijhDODg) [### Aurora Vergara-Figueroa ](/people/aurora-vergara-figueroa)2025-2026 Mark Mamolen Fellow Aurora Vergara-Figueroa is Colombia’s first Afro-Colombian Minister of National Education and former Deputy Minister of Higher Education, where she advanced equity and access in higher education while shaping national policy. She is the founder of the... ![Aurora Vergara-Figueroa](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-07/Vergara%20A%20%20photo.jpg?itok=EFL7hbXO) [### Ted Widmer ](/people/ted-widmer)2025-2026 W. E. B. Du Bois Fellow Ted Widmer is an historian and former presidential adviser who writes widely on history, politics and their intersection. He is Distinguished Lecturer at the Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York. From 1997 to 2001, he was a foreign... ![Ted Widmer](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-07/Widmer-T-photo-%281%29.jpg?itok=0b9-elRz) [### About the Fellowship Program ](/fellowship-program) ![Exterior photo of the Hutchins Center in Harvard Square](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/facade_full-size_06.jpg?itok=bhw063XP) [### Alumni Fellows ](/alumni-fellows) ![A young Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. stands among a dozen members of the 2000-2001 class of fellows in front of a brick building, posing and smiling for the camera together](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/2025-06/2001fellows.jpg?itok=FLgbkzM6) [### Fellowship Application ](/apply) ![W. E. B. Du Bois at his desk](/sites/g/files/omnuum10831/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/hutchins/files/duboisatdesk_0.jpg?itok=PIPr6gLD)