Congratulations to our Dissertation and Pre-Dissertation Rocca fellows for the academic year of 2025-2026. Find information about our Rocca fellows and their projects below. You may view more detailed abstracts by clicking on their names.
The application deadline for Dissertation and Pre-Dissertation Rocca fellowships for academic year 2026-2027 will be in spring of 2026.
Rocca Dissertation Fellows
Derek Jay Allen (Hispanic Languages & Literatures)
Postcolonial Identities in Luso-Afro-Brazilian Literature and Film depicting the Luso-African Wars for Independence and the subsequent Mozambican and Angolan Civil Wars
Jane Mango Angar (Political Science)
From Fragmentation to Recognition: Uniting Marginalized Voices in African Disability Rights Movements for State Intervention
Dan Miswa Basil (Environmental Science, Policy, and Management)
Climate of confusion: challenges and opportunities in mitigation-adaptation
duality in Kenya. Through what processes do degraded lands and waste(ful) forests suddenly become valuable?
Purba Chaterjee (Public Health)
Suicide Bereavement and Impact of Stigma on Help-Seeking Behaviour in Nairobi, Kenya
Chi Man Cheung (Agricultural and Resource Economics)
Three essays on health and environmental economics, and the political economy of artisanal and small-scale gold mining in Ghana
Katherine ‘Kat’ Cullbertson (Environmental Science, Policy, and Management)
Investigating rainforest resilience and barriers to regeneration in eastern Madagascar
Sarah Daniel (Political Science)
Where we Draw the Line: Exploring Subjective Understandings of neighborhoods in Urban Kenya
Londiwe Gamedze (English)
Racialized Political Consciousness and The Historical Protest Novel: Reading South African Women’s Fiction, 1960-1980
Grady Shea Killeen (Economics)
Barriers to new product adoption among firms in sub-Saharan Africa
Dinah Lawan (Political Science)
Civilian-Based Strategies of Non-Violent Resistance: A Study of Civilian Responses to Boko Haram Violence in Borno State, Northern Nigeria
Matthew McGee (Integrative Biology)
Community assemblages and species distributions along an elevational gradient in northeastern Madagascar
Sibahle Ndwayana (Geography)
Contesting Sonicologies: Nation, Space, and Blackness in Santiago, Cabo Verde
Rocca Pre-Dissertation Fellows
Sabrina Amrane (History)
The poetics and politics of property in the Algerian Sahara (1000-1600)
Tim Cejka (Economics)
Heterogeneous Welfare Effects of Corrective Taxes: Evidence from South Africa's Soda Tax
Clay Lamar (History)
Language and the Nation: France, Language, and the Great Desert in the 18th Century
Kyoungsoo Park (Medical Anthropology)
Still Lives Ongoing: The Body Politics and the Futurity in Tanzania
Jabateh Sekou (Political Science)
Memorialization and Post-Conflict Reconciliation: A Comparative Study of Liberia and Sierra Leone
Nachiket Shah (Economics)
Essays in Development Economics: Does Underutilized Capacity (‘Slack’) Disconnect Markets?
Ezera Fellows
The Ezera Fellowship gives priority to graduate students from West Africa who show exceptional promise of advancing scholarship in African Studies in the social sciences, humanities, and public policy and who demonstrate strong leadership potential. Students from other African regions are eligible and are encouraged to apply.
Jabateh Sekou (Political Science)
Memorialization and Post-Conflict Reconciliation: A Comparative Study of Liberia and Sierra Leone
Yosef Tadesse (Political Science)
Who Governs Who?: The Effect of Shifts in Administrative Jurisdictions on Citizens' Political Behavior
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