Mariam Fofana, a third-year student at Northwestern University’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded a $35,000 Beinecke Scholarship to pursue graduate studies in African history, with a focus on modern and contemporary West African and diasporic histories, according to a May 13 announcement.
Fofana is Northwestern’s 11th recipient of the Beinecke Scholarship. She majors in history with a regional concentration in the Middle East and Africa. “I have always understood the practice of seeking knowledge to be an eternal quest, and I am beyond humbled to have received this honor alongside some of the nation’s brightest minds,” Fofana said. “In pursuing graduate studies, I hope to fill silences in the historical record of my people and return to my homeland with scholarship that widens the archive of who we have been and who we might become. I believe this award brings me one step closer to that calling.”
Born in the Bronx to Sierra Leonean immigrant parents, Fofana’s academic interests center on issues related to displacement and the unrecorded labors of West African womanhood. Her scholarly pursuits include gender studies, migration, refugeehood, sociolinguistics, postcolonial cultural production, as well as dress and fashion studies—all focused on questions of identity and mobility.
Fofana has conducted independent ethnographic research over two summers. One project examined how Sierra Leonean sex workers use Krio language for memory articulation and imagining futures; another explored how refugee West African women create communities in Chicago and New York City through gendered memory, oral history, and urban spatial practices.
She has also participated in research about nightlife and domesticity in colonial Nigeria as part of Northwestern’s Material History Lab under Akinwumi Ogundiran. In addition to her independent work, Fofana previously received a Mellon Mays Fellowship and Gilman International Scholarship. She is involved with several programs including the Kaplan Humanities Scholars Program, Brady Scholars Program in Ethics and Civic Life, Leopold Fellowship, and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc.
Northwestern students interested in scholarships or fellowships are encouraged by university officials to contact the Office of Fellowships for more information.
