IF MA Student Fellows receive Mobility Fund

Congratulations to the MA Fellows who have been awarded Imagining Futures Mobility Funds. Thanks to the IF funding, over the coming months the students will travel internationally, extending their networks and furthering their important and exciting research. Read more about the students and their projects:

Rabia Abba Omar is a researcher and curator working towards an MA in Visual Studies from Stellenbosch University’s Visual Arts Department. Her research explores the body as an archive of violences and engages with evocations of body-archives in South African artworks. She likes to think of/with the ocean, memory, archives, material culture, and current expressions of past violences. She holds a MA in Heritage Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand, where she was part of the Oceanic Humanities of the Global South, researching the slave ship São José. She currently co-convenes the Archive Speaks reading group in partnership with GUS (Gallery University of Stellenbosch). She is also an alumna of the UnSchool of Disruptive Design’s Emerging Leaders Fellowship and the Accountability Lab’s Non-Profit Management Fellowship. 

Based in Johannesburg’s Stellenbosch University, Gratia’s Masters research focuses on the role of Rwandan traditional dance in understanding the experiences of refugees living in exile. In 2023 she coordinated the first transnational collaboration of it’s kind between the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest (AVReQ) and the Australian High Commission to South Africa. IF funding will enable Gratia to connect in person with colleagues at the UK universities of York and Exeter, as well as the opportunity to conduct interviews with members of the Rwandan refugee diaspora in the Birmingham. area

Based at Stellenbosch University, Mishkah’s IF funding will enable her to visit colleagues and institutions in London, UK. Her primary focus within this journey is the innovative London Lab, a mobile virtual collaborative initiative housed within Central Saint Martins (CSM) and forged in partnership with the British Museum. Beyond the London Lab, Mishkah will also visit to iconic cultural institutions such as Tate Modern, the British Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Barbican Conservatory, the Museum of the Home, and the Design Museum. These excursions will enrich Mishkah’s understanding of the artistic and historical contexts that shape the narratives of identity and memory. 

Dodzi will be hosted in London by Peter deGraft-Johnson, popularly known as the Repeatbeat poet, who also happens to be a featured artist on the EP Mevado: becoming Agbenɔxevi which was created as part of Dodzi’s research work with The IF programme. Peter is a Hip-Hop Artist, early career researcher, and DJ focusing on the music of Africa & the African Diaspora. The IF funding will enable Dodzi to the black British poetry and hip-hop community in London, visiting London based Archives and libraries as well as hosting Dodzi on the Repeatbeat’s radio show.

Lina’s master’s research at the University of Saint Joseph centred on disappearances in Syria. With a focus on the wives of the disappeared who were displaced to Lebanon Lina researched the emotional, social, legal, and financial consequences on these women. Many Syrian families of the disappeared fled Syria and Lebanon to Europe where they formed associations such as Families for Freedom and Caesar Families Associations. The IF funding will enable Lina to travel to Germany to conduct new fieldwork. There she will meet with Syrian and international activists working for the cause of the disappeared and interview families.