Middle East Medievalists: Fellowships for Graduate Students of Color, 2021

As promised in our July 2020 Statement on Anti-Racism, the Board of Directors of Middle East Medievalists (MEM) is pleased to announce the launch of a new fellowship to support graduate students of color in medieval studies who wish to attend the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA). We expect to award up to $1500 to offset the costs of attending the 2021 meeting for successful applicants. We will open a first round of applications as soon as MESA issues its program decisions to help graduate students of color who are formally participating in the meeting pay the registration fee. Details about our simple, needs-based application process will be forthcoming, but we wanted to make the announcement now, in conjunction with MESA’s 2021 call for papers, in order to encourage those who might otherwise opt out of the conference due to cost. We would like to express our gratitude to the anonymous donor who enabled us to launch this fellowship. We plan to fundraise for this fellowship in order to offer it every year.