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By Sunday Ani
A Nigerian scholar based in the United States of America, Mr. Chijioke Onah, has won the 2023 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship award.
This was announced by the scholarship giant, the American Council of Learned Society (ACLS), in a statement a copy of which was made available to the Daily Sun.
Onah’s project, “Toxic Intimacies: The (Bio) Politics of Waste and Disposability in Africa and African Diaspora,“ which won him the award, was selected out of about 700 entries from various countries of the world.
This brought to 27 the number of academic awards that the Enugu State born prolific scholar has won since 2013.
Onah is currently a PhD Student at the Cornell University, USA, where he specialises in Black Atlantic Literature, African Studies, Trauma and Memory Studies, and Environmental Humanities.
President of the donor organisation, Joy Connolly, who made the announcement explained that the award programme was a sponsorship grant from the ACLS’s partner, the Mellon Foundation. She noted that it was initiated to support exceptional emerging scholars who were pursuing pathbreaking research.
Part of the statement read: “ACLS is proud to announce that Chijioke K. Onah has been awarded a 2023 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship, the statement read, in part. He emergef through a rigorous, and multi-stage peer review.”
The award, which aims at supporting innovative approaches to dissertation research in the humanities and interpretative social sciences with a cash support of $50,000, is a new category of a series of fellowship and grant programmes of the ACLS.
Forty four other scholars were also named as 2023 fellowship awardees, including three other Nigerians, who will also smile home with $50,000 cash support each.
A breakdown of the cash support showed that $40,000 stipend is for fellowship year, $8,000 for project-related research, training, professional development, and travel; while $2,000 stipend is meant to support external mentorship and critical expert advising the fellow’s project.
The ACLS boss also stressed that the award was designed to support and encourage bold and innovative doctoral students in the humanities and interpretative social sciences through their dissertation research, especially at the formative stage of dissertation development.
She thanked the Mellon Foundation for her partnership, pointing out that such support helps to forge pathways towards a more diverse and inclusive academy.
In his reaction, Mr. Onah said he was thrilled by the development.
He dedicated the award to all indigent students in Nigeria and Africa, describing it as a validation of his hard work and a push to do more.
He thanked the award donors for finding his work worthy of selection, adding that the accompanying financial support would significantly be useful for his present and future academic endeavours.
“To be named a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellow is to be recognised alongside other extraordinarily talented scholars. But, I see it much as a push to do more rather than simply a validation of my past efforts,“ he said.
