Gbemisola Abiola is an Anthropologist, having recently received her doctorate from Harvard University. She conducted a comparative ethnographic study of how Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who are violently uprooted from their homes in northeast Nigeria by Boko Haram, are able rebuild their lives. In doing this project, she focused on how the resettlement and rehabilitation of IDPs intersect with local, national, and transnational humanitarian interventions, and how IDPs leverage these interventions for survival.

For her fellowship project, When 'Japá' Meets 'Blaxit': A Study of the Continuum of Black Migration, she will study how the migration of African Americans out of the US to Africa, and that of Africans from the homeland to the diaspora are connected. Her goal is to understand how seemingly disparate pursuits for black emancipation are actually connected in a continuum of migration.