Alicia Banks Awarded Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Fellowship

Programs in Anthropology are proud to announce that Ph.D. Candidate Alicia Banks has been awarded the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Fellowship. The DDRA fellowship program provides opportunities to doctoral candidates to engage in dissertation research abroad in modern foreign languages and area studies. The program is designed to contribute to the development and improvement of the study of modern foreign languages and area studies in the United States. More information about the fellowship can be found here.

The Fulbright-Hays fellowship award will support Banks' dissertation research in Brazil. She will be conducting her research for about twelve months on the educational practices of quilombo communities in Salvador, Bahia, in northeastern Brazil. As quilombos are communities established by the descendants of runaway enslaved peoples in Brazil, she will be examining how quilombolas (community members) use concepts of resistance, collective memory, and territoriality as instructional tools to maintain and preserve their historical and cultural identities, particularly in the instruction of Afro-Brazilian history and culture.

We congratulate Alicia on this wonderful achievement!