Black Studies offers one-year residential Dissertations Fellowships to ABD PhD students working in Interdisciplinary, Social Science, Humanities, and STEM disciplines whose research is specifically situated within Black Studies. Dissertation Scholars teach one undergraduate course and present one public lecture designed to support Fellows in completing their dissertation during the award year. Black Studies has hosted 25 Dissertation Fellows since 2010, with a 68% placement rate in tenure-track academic jobs and postdoctoral fellowships overall and an 82% placement in the past ten years. Black Studies Dissertation Fellows’ research is exceptionally diverse in disciplinary and geographic reach.

Each academic year, the Department of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara invites applications for two dissertation scholar fellowships. Applicants must be advanced to candidacy at an accredited university. International applicants are welcome to apply. We seek Dissertation Scholars working in Interdisciplinary, Social Science, Humanities, and STEM disciplines whose research focus is specifically situated within Black Studies.

People

Dissertation Scholars

Cristina Moreno

Cristina Moreno

Dissertation Scholar

 

CRISTINA MORENO
I am a Black Colombian woman, descended from uprooted parents who relocated from a Pacific town (Chocó) to eastern Cali, Colombia, where I was born and raised my Black son as a single mother and head of the household. I hold a bachelors degree in art education and a masters in journalism from Universidad ICESI in Colombia, and I am currently a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of California, Riverside.


My professional experience is primarily focused on education and social activism
through collectives, social organizations, and educational institutions in Colombia. As a Black woman from eastern Cali—a city whose economic growth has been built upon the exploitation of racialized, displaced, uprooted, and silenced people. In this sense, "I also am" what Hartman terms the "afterlife of slavery." I am deeply committed to the social and racial realities of my country and its specific contexts.

I have been an active member of the Casa Cultural El Chontaduro Association in Cali, Colombia, by contributing to the general investigative processes and participating in its research line program. My research interests center on analyzing the historical role of Black women in shaping Colombian society and the African diaspora from a situated perspective, particularly regarding the place of servitude as a continuation of the slavery system and its logic. Recognizing my connection to these historical realities drives my activism in both social and
academic arenas.