Divided City Graduate Summer Research Fellowship

The Center for the Humanities, in partnership with the College and Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Design, is pleased to announce a new summer research fellowship opportunity for graduate students in the Humanities, Humanistic Social Sciences, Architecture, Urban Design and Landscape Architecture. As part of our interdisciplinary initiative on The Divided City, we are awarding multiple grants of up to $5,000 each in support of two months of full-time research by graduate students (M.U.D., M.Arch., M.L.A. DrSU, or Ph.D.) on urban segregation broadly conceived.

Grant & Application Information

Eligibility/Grant Details

In order to support graduate student interest in and research on The Divided City and to forge sustainable interdisciplinary connections among graduate students in the humanities, architecture, and urban design, we are offering up to ten summer research fellowships for summer 2017.  Research will be supported at the master’s, pre-dissertation, or dissertation level, with the amount of each fellowship capped at $5,000.  All summer fellowship recipients will be required to attend the Summer City Seminar on methods in May, 2017, to participate in the City Seminar throughout the 2017-2018 academic year, and present and workshop their research findings in a fall City Seminar.  The fellowship tenure may be carried out in residence at Washington University, abroad, or at another appropriate site for the research. 

Proposal Requirements

A proposal should contain the following information in one document:

  1. A completed application form.
  2. A narrative description of the project, not to exceed 750 words, that details its disciplinary and intellectual underpinnings, its content and form, and what the applicant intends to accomplish during the two-month term of the grant. Please be sure to describe the project’s specific outcomes and how it relates to the completion of the graduate degree.
  3. A statement, not to exceed 100 words, that explains the project’s relevance to the broader Divided City Initiative. 
  4. Up to three additional pages of images, musical scores, or other supporting non-textual materials [optional]
  5. A current transcript.
  6. Bibliography (no more than two pages)
  7. A reference letter from the applicant’s graduate advisor or faculty member familiar with applicant’s work. 


Applications will be evaluated by a committee of four faculty members, who currently serve on the Divided City Advisory Board.  They will use the following criteria in their selection process:  

  1. The potential of the project to advance the field of study in which it is proposed and make an original contribution to knowledge about cities and urban separation.
  2. The quality of the proposal with regard to its methodology, scope, theoretical framework, and grounding in the relevant scholarly literature. (While not a requirement, interdisciplinary approaches are strongly encouraged.)
  3. The feasibility of the project and the likelihood that the applicant will execute the work within the proposed timeframe.
  4. The scholarly record and career trajectory of the applicant.

Applications should be emailed to artsci-divcityapp@email.wustl.edu.

For further information on the Divided City Initiative, please see the Divided City website. Questions can be addressed to Tila Neguse, Project Coordinator of the Center for the Humanities at artsci-divcityapp@email.wustl.edu.

Past Recipients

2015-16

Waseem-Ahmed Bin-Kasim
Department of History

"Sanitary Segregation: Cleansing Colonial Cities, Accra and Nairobi, 1908-1963"

In the first two decades of the 20th century, the reordering of urban space through racial segregation was commonplace in colonial cities. Beginning in 1908 and in response to public health threats, the Colonial Office endorsed W.J.R. Simpson's segregationist vision as a remedy for the recurring outbreaks of contagious diseases in British colonial Africa. While scholars have examined Simpson's segregationist vision for a stable and healthy empire, they have not explored the varied local contexts in which that vision was implemented. Based on official documents, newspapers, reports by hygiene experts, and life histories, this project explores the application of Simpson's segregationist blueprint in two different colonial contexts, Accra and Nairobi, from 1908 to 1963. The dissertation seeks to understand how local actors facilitated, challenged, and adapted Simpson's sanitation-through-segregation scheme as they shaped the urban landscape. It demonstrates how sanitation became a secondary mechanism for enforcing and contesting the ordering of urban space.

RESEARCH SITES: Accra, Ghana; Nairobi, Kenya