2025
Brandon Archer
Brandon Archer (He/Him/His) is a senior at Swarthmore College, with a special double major in Black Studies and English Literature entitled “Visual Cultures and Literature of the African Diaspora”. An MMUF fellow, his research considers what is at stake when representing the Black body in 'The Trayvon Generation’ and what is made possible through its refashioning and hybridization? Examining works from select contemporary artists including Tschabalala Self, Nick Cave, and Amy Sherald, the work asks questions about Black embodiments, the body’s role in constructing Blackness, and Black abstraction’s position in a liberatory world-building project. Additionally, Brandon has been a research assistant and consultant with the Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund contributing to a comprehensive report on the increasing regression of civic space and student activist's rights. He holds various research and leadership positions in Philadelphia and serves as Executive Director of UrbEd, Inc., a Philadelphia-based policy nonprofit. On campus he is a Writing Associate, RA, President of the Afro-American Student Society, President of the Swarthmore McCabe Society, and BCC intern.
Aaliyah Bullen
Aaliyah Bullen is a senior from New York studying Cognitive Science, with a Linguistics focus, and Computer Science. During her time as a Mellon fellow, she has brought her integrated perspective on language to answer major linguistic questions. Her current areas of interest include psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, and English creoles. She spent summer ‘23 studying and developing theories on Singaporean English, or Singlish. Her research included public perception of the language, influence from Chinese and Malay, and syntactic topicalization. During summer ‘24, she split her time between working at the Research Unit for Indigenous Languages in Melbourne, Australia and developing an independent study into the vowel production of English speakers with Southeast Asian language backgrounds. Through this work, she has recognized the influence working with diverse language data can have on the field and hopes to carry this value throughout her academic career. Outside of academics, she is a saxophonist in Wind Ensemble and a board member for both Aja (black femme identity group) and BOUQUET (fashion club).
Fatima Hmada
Fatima Ezahra Khadija Hmada is a senior from Blida, Algeria, and Brooklyn, New York. She is majoring in Sociology & Anthropology and minoring in Arabic Language & Literature and History. She is a Critical Language Scholar and a Philip Evans Scholar. Fatima’s current research interrogates the post-colonial literature following the Beur Movement and its representations of cultural liminality, hybrid identity, and belonging within the Franco-Algerian tradition. During her free time, Fatima tutors incarcerated individuals at SCI Chester through the Petey Greene Program and is pursuing her Doula Certification. Fatima enjoys baking and reading Arab fiction. After graduating from Swarthmore, Fatima hopes to pursue a Ph.D in Anthropology with a focus on Middle Eastern studies.
Seth Jeter
Seth Jeter is a senior majoring in economics and English literature. He aspires to become a historian of the mid 19th century Atlantic world who is broadly concerned with the history of capitalism from a world-systems perspective. Seth’s research interests focus on the linkages between mid 19th century movements of the English working class (such as the Chartist movement) and antislavery and proletarian struggles in North America and the Anglophone Caribbean and the extent to which there existed a transnational sense of class consciousness between exploited persons in these contexts. His summer research and ongoing project attempt to situate the enslaved and recently emancipated people of the Caribbean within this larger tapestry of transnational class consciousness. Beyond his academic commitments, Seth enjoys hiking, reading, and playing story-oriented video games.
Reuben Kadushin
Reuben Kadushin is a senior from Jamaica Queens, New York City, pursuing an honors special major in political sociology and an honors minor in English Literature at Swarthmore College. Reuben’s research interests include Marxism(s), world-systems theory, dependency theory, liberal-capitalist development and liberalism in late 19th and early 20th century Mexico and Central America, Cold War Studies, the antinomies of the Third World Project, Central American History, Mexican History, racial capitalism, and the histories of anti-systemic movements throughout Latin America, particularly in the 20th century. This summer, he worked on research towards his thesis tentatively titled “Red Scare, Race and Revolution in Cold War Mexico”, which will explore the ways in which Mexican indigenismo – a uniquely core component of postrevolutionary Mexico’s nationalism – and anti-communism took particular, mutually-interacting forms during the Cold War, notably in response to the Cuban Revolution, indigenous-led, communist movements in southern Mexico, and U.S Imperialism's hegemonic 'containment policy'. Reuben’s previous research project on W.E.B Du Bois entitled “Black Folk, Then and Now and the Late Du Bois’s Marxist Dialectic” has recently been published in the October issue of the journal Science & Society. He hopes to pursue a PhD in History.
Nina Phillips
Nina Phillips is a senior from New York majoring in History and minoring in Computer Science and Black Studies. Her research interests lie in the formation of Black social consciousness, political education, and racial capitalism. In her current research, she investigates the ways in which the Black Panther Party’s educational initiatives fit into existing movements calling for community control of schools. Touching on questions about the value of Afrocentric pedagogy and tensions between radical imaginations and community needs, Nina’s work hopes to further dissect the role of education as a liberatory tool. At Swarthmore, Nina is Treasurer of the Afro-American Student Society, and an editor of the Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal. Outside of her academic life, she enjoys swing dance and narrative drawing. Other research interests include fashion history, embodiment theory, and multimodality. She hopes to pursue a PhD in History.
June Shin
June Shin is a senior from Los Angeles, California majoring in History and Political Sociology. His research interests include the global political economy, capitalism, and postcolonial state formation. This summer, he explored the brief self-rule period of the 1980 Gwangju Uprising in South Korea as a case study for a liberatory future of participatory democracy and the possibilities of abolition. At Swarthmore, June is part of the Petey Greene Program and Cinema Club. In his free time, he likes to tune in to live European football matches. He plans on pursuing a PHD in History.
Andrés Villalba
Andrés Villalba (they/them) is a student researcher completing a dual major in Educational Studies and Sociology/Anthropology. They are interested in the cultural and socio political histories of dual language bilingual education (DLBE) in the metropolitan Atlanta area. They are particularly interested in exploring how race, school choice, and neoliberalism impacted the development of bilingual education and how these ideas manifest themselves in discourse apparent in statewide and district policy. This past summer they split their time working with Prof. Azuero-Quijano’s project on helping to revitalize the teaching of the ‘Anthropology of Law’ at an undergraduate level, as well as developing a literature review on the historical development of DLBE in Georgia. Other research interests they have include digital humanities, critical language policy studies, translanguaging pedagogy, culturally relevant education, and the Nuevo Latiné Sur.
2026
Lena Habtu
Lena Habtu is a junior from New York City studying Honors Political Sociology with minors in Arabic and Computer Science. Her research interests lie in the role of multiethnicity — specifically linguistic plurality and cultural heterogeneity — in influencing the political structures and climates of African states, applying key focus to the Ethiopian ethnic federalist experiment. Beyond simply assessing the efficacy of different political systems and secessionist movements, she is curious about the process of self-interpellation into ethno-national identity amidst moments of conflict. This past summer, she conducted analytical research of conflict trends in the Red Sea region (the Horn of Africa and Gulf states) for the African Centre of Constructive Resolution of Disputes in Durban, South Africa. Outside of academics, Lena is a math tutor for the Chester Children’s Chorus, the Director of Communications for Aja, a Writing Associate Fellow, the Outreach & Community Liaison for the Swarthmore African Students Association, an Arabic tutor, and enjoys taking walks (and swims!) in Crum Woods. She is also a Lang Opportunity Scholar, Philip Evans Scholar, and Richard Rubin Scholar. She intends to pursue a PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology with a regional specialization on Africa.
Simba Makhsud
Simba Makhsud (they/them) is a junior from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania double-majoring in Sociology/Anthropology and Islamic Studies. Their research addresses Sufi orders in southern Somalia as agential participants in the articulation of specific racial, ethnic, and political identities in the emergence and dissolution of nation, following Somalia’s independence and through the Somali Civil War. This summer, they worked to unravel the ange of material and textual sources that have created specific Sufi phenomena in southern Somalia, while conducting comparative studies of thnogenesis and nation-building in neighboring East African states. Outside of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, they are a Writing Associate Fellow, a lover of bikes and nature, and an intern at Swarthmore’s List Gallery.
