Our former Amharic/Arabic FLAS fellow, Sara Swetzoff, is awarded a 2020-2021 Fulbright Research Fellowship

Our former Amharic/Arabic FLAS fellow, Sara Swetzoff, has been awarded a 2020-2021 Fulbright Research Fellowship. Her Fulbright research focuses on the resilience and community-building within the shared network of Ethiopian returnees and Yemeni refugees in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Since the 2014 start of the ongoing war in Yemen, hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian and Yemeni nationals have fled from Yemen to Ethiopia; many individuals belong to bicultural and mixed-citizenship families who call both countries home. This community highlights the Pan-African connections spanning the Red Sea and challenges superficial area studies boundaries between the "Middle East" and Africa. The case study also demonstrates the international solidarity currents inherent to labor migration, as both intimate relationships and longstanding regional mobilities are denaturalized by modern borders and state bureaucracies. 

Howard University's exceptional Department of African Studies and its Pan-African geographical framework provided the necessary intellectual home to foster this research to fruition. The enduring legacy of the unique "Howard School" of international affairs also inspired this research and its theoretical approach. The support of the Center for African Studies and its Title VI funding for Foreign Language & Area Studies (FLAS) graduate language study was also essential to the success of this Fulbright application. As an aspiring educator, Swetzoff hopes that this research will be the first step in a long career dedicated to recentering Africa in the teaching of global affairs and international relations.