2025 Grant and Award Winners

Chloe Center circle image on white background with black art and lettering

On a sunny afternoon at the end of April, the Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism honored a number of its kinfolk with awards as well as research grants for undergraduate and graduate students. Selecting grantees was a challenge, due to the strong interest among numerous students in conducting research on themes of interest to the Center. As demonstrated last year during the inaugural awards ceremony, the campus-wide interest in the critical study of racism, immigration, and colonialism is robust. The Center is grateful to all applicants, recommenders, nominators, and nominees.

Crowd watching speaker with sun gleaming

The winners were as follows:

Undergraduate Summer Research Awards

Ben Andreesen
“Painting to Reclaim: Imagining New Cartagenero Future Through Street Art”
Major: Anthropology, senior
Mentor: Alessandro Angelini

Anupama Cemballi
“Charting and Cultivating Climate Resilience Amidst Precarious Futures”
Major: Medicine, Science, and the Humanities (MA student)
Mentor: Nicole Labruto

Lillian Liu
“Unsettled Boundaries, Fractured Forms, and Disrupted Lives: Fragmentation in 20th-Century Chinese Literature”
Major: History, senior
Mentor: François Furstenberg

Travis Thai Pham
“Afro-Asian Solidarity from Saigon to Selma: Ho Chi Minh’s Transnational Reflections on Race Relations, Labor Reform, and Civil Rights in the United States”
Major: Critical Diaspora Studies, sophomore
Mentor: Nandini Pandey

Hailey Saya Tomlinson
“Criminalized Polyvictimization for Black Trans* Women in Baltimore & Beyond”
Major: Sociology, senior
Mentor: Zophia Edwards

Undergraduate students and professor standing in row
(l-r) Anupama Cemballi, Travis Thai Pham, Stuart Schrader, Hailey Saya Tomlinson, Lillian Liu

Graduate Research and Travel Grants

Emmanuel John A. Awine
“British Administrative Practices and the Construction of Ethnic Stereotypes in Raided Communities in the Gold Coast, and Burkina Faso, 1874-1960”
Department: History
Mentor: Didier Gondola

Hans Frex
“Navigating Grief: Two Immigrant Narratives of Black Maternal Mourning in Chile”
Department: Modern Languages & Literatures
Mentor: Gisela Heffes

Minah Kang
“Staging Pacific: Hawai‘i, the Institute of Pacific Relations, and Regional World Making”
Department: Political Science
Mentor: Robbie Shilliam

Mateus Mendonça
“Entangled Platforms: Migration Infrastructures and the Transnational Class Formation of Brazilian Food Delivery Workers”
Department: Sociology
Mentor: Beverly Silver

Graduate students and professor standing in row
(l-r) Mateus Mendonça, Hans Frex, Stuart Schrader, Emmanuel John A. Awine, Minah Kang

Award for Outstanding Citizenship Practice

Dr. Jasmine Blanks Jones
Executive Director, JHU Center for Social Concern
Lecturer, Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism

White man and Black woman holding award certificate and plant

This award recognizes a student, faculty, or staff member who has engaged in the practices of citizenship at the grassroots level, contributing from below to the betterment of the university, the city of Baltimore, and our world, through community engagement and creative anti-racist action.

Undergraduate Research Excellence Award

Ethan Tan
History (BA/MA), senior

Professor and student holding award certificate

This award is for an undergraduate student who has completed original research on topics of interest to the Chloe Center and delivered their findings to the public. It recognizes superlative contributions to the research agenda of the Chloe Center.

Outstanding Undergraduate Achievement Award

Maryam Amosu
Neuroscience, senior

Professor and student holding award certificate

This award recognizes all-around excellence in academics and community engagement by an undergraduate who has made outstanding contributions to the life of the Chloe Center. 

Outstanding Graduate Achievement Award

Ronay Bakan
Graduate Fellow, Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism
PhD candidate, Political Science

Professor and graduate student holding award certificate

This award is for a finishing PhD candidate who has made invaluable and outstanding intellectual, practical, and political contributions to the life of the Chloe Center during their time as a graduate student.

Award winners with certificates in row
(l-r) Stuart Schrader, Ronay Bakan, Jasmine Blanks Jones, Ethan Tan, Maryam Amosu

The Chloe Center congratulates all its awardees, and we look forward to presentations next academic year by the grant winners on the research they will be conducting.

Photos by April Ma and Ga Eun Cho