Established in the 1988/1989 academic year, the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) is committed to broadening the range of scholarly perspectives in the US academy, with a focus on the humanities and the humanistic social sciences. Its name honors Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, the noted African American educator, statesman, minister, former president of Morehouse College, and mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Founded with an initial cohort of eight member institutions, the program has grown to include 47 programs, including three consortia.

To date, the program has produced more than 1,200 PhDs, more than 800 of whom are currently college professors. Numerous others have taken their valuable humanities training into venues ranging from museums and nonprofit organizations to publishing houses and government positions. At any given time, about 800 MMUF fellows are enrolled in PhD programs, while the fellowship supports approximately 500 undergraduate students each year.

Through programs that emphasize mentoring, research support, and student cohort building, Mellon partners with member colleges and universities to identify and support students of great promise and to help them become scholars and professionals of the highest distinction.

MMUF is proud of its legacy of leading scholars whose perspectives greatly enrich research and teaching in their fields.
 

In order to be eligible for MMUF, students must first be enrolled at one of the MMUF member institutions. The fellowship is not awarded directly to individual students; instead, the Mellon Foundation awards grants to the program’s member institutions, which then select fellows and administer the program on each campus.

Students must formally apply to their campus MMUF program to be considered for selection as fellows. The application process generally includes a written statement of purpose, a reflection on the ways the applicant’s life experiences and academic aspirations would contribute to the promotion of multivocality, one or more recommendations from faculty members, an academic transcript, an interview with the selection committee, and other requirements according to each institution’s procedures.

Tamara Walker, Ph.D, Faculty Coordinator

Milan O. Taylor, Graduate Mentor

Amelia Alton

Amelia Alton is a junior majoring in Theatre and Sociology. They grew up in San Francisco surrounded by the Intertribal Indigenous community of the Bay Area and outside of their theatre work, spent much of their time in high school working as an intern for the SFUSD’s Indian Education program with a focus on Indigenous youth activism and cultural experiences. Passionate about the presence of Indigenous history and culture in academia, she additionally worked on the development of a Native American History curriculum in her high school. Amelia intends to focus her research with the Mellon Mays program on how the theatre has been used as a tool of colonization and how Indigenous people use performance as a tool of liberation. Outside of Mellon Mays, Amelia performs with Barnard’s Theatre Department and is involved in various student theatre and dance projects.

Catalina Arriaga

Catalina Arriaga is a senior history major whose work focuses on colonialism, empires, and twentieth-century Mexico. Her research examines citizenship and border imperialism in the United States and Israel, situating both within longer histories of settler colonialism and imperial expansion. She emphasizes how the very conception of the citizen has historically depended on practices of othering that legitimize exclusion, displacement, and violence. By tracing how states entwine legality with morality and legitimacy through militarized borders, surveillance, and architectures of exclusion, Catalina highlights the structural ways nation-states preserve hierarchies of belonging.

At the same time, Catalina’s project turns to revolutionary movements such as the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in Mexico and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which contest legal classifications like citizenship and propose radical alternatives to state-centered belonging. Her work emphasizes how these movements reimagine autonomy and collective identity, while also pointing toward ways to autonomously grow collectives built on longevity and interdependence beyond the nation-state.

Thandiwe Baker

Thandiwe Baker is a senior studying history. Currently, she is working on a research project documenting the development of real and imagined solidarities between Ireland and Jamaica during the post-colonial period, with a specific focus on leaders such as Marcus Garvey. Her other interests include Black radical thought, and topics in Middle Eastern studies. Outside of MMUF, Thandiwe serves as a deputy editor for the Columbia Daily Spectator, covering West Harlem for the city news section, and is an editor for Roots, the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnic Studies magazine.

Sekna Bazzi

Sekna Bazzi (she/her) is a senior studying History and Economics at Barnard College. With a keen focus on memory, Sekna is researching the 1967 Newark Riots, examining both the lived experiences and political dyanmics of Newark residents at the time. In progress to be her senior thesis, this research challenged preconceived narratives of ‘urban decline’ by highlighting how Newark residents engaged in sustained resistance and reconstruction efforts despite state abandonment. As a first-generation, low-income student, Sekna is passionate about organizing and writing against systemic subjucation, as seen through her work as a youth educator at The YA-YA Network and Research Assistant at the Barnard Center for Research on Women. 

Leighton Christian

Leighton Christian is a junior majoring in Art History and Archaeology. Her research interests emerge from a fascination with visual storytelling and the ways objects construct, preserve, and communicate narratives. Working at the intersection of Art History and Archaeology, Leighton focuses on Black material and visual culture, with a particular interest in the art and intellectual traditions of the Harlem Renaissance. She is also deeply passionate about arts education and equity, and about ensuring that the complex histories of Black intellectual and artistic life are preserved, interpreted, and told in their fullness and truth. 

Chloe Moya

Chloe Moya is a senior double majoring in Art History and Neuroscience. Her research explores the often-overlooked roles of women as artists and organizers in the Chicano Mural Movement. Drawing on her experience as a Mexican-American San Diego native who often visited Chicano Park, her thesis examines the first pillar painted by women at the outdoor mural park. As a first-generation low-income student, she is passionate about arts accessibility and education, contributing through her mural practice, teaching positions, and as a museum educator at The Frick Collection.

Mimia Ousilas

Mimia Ousilas is a senior majoring in Economic and Social History and Africana Studies. Her research centers on the musical practice of Gnawa music in Morocco and Algeria as a legacy of enslaved populations’ music and a marker of Blackness in the region. Specifically, she seeks to explore the ways in which Gnawa music draws parallels to blues and gospel music in the United States, as not just music coming out of experiences of enslavement, but exploring how spiritual trances and ancestral veneration are both practiced across the art forms, and the specific historical and cultural aspects that draw out of an experience of enslavement. Drawing on her experience being half-Algerian and half-Taiwanese, she seeks to expand upon her own knowledge of Blackness in North Africa and ground her lived experiences in academic scholarship. 

Gaby Gongora Rosales

Gaby Gongora Rosales is a junior majoring in Political Science and Spanish and Latin American Cultures. Her research investigates how immigrants from Latin America to the United States who have experienced political systems with different levels of democratic backsliding interact with democracy, voting, partisanship, and political institutions in the United States. Passionate about how culture constitutes politics, Gaby is also interested in the convergence of popular culture and political movements. Outside of her research with Mellon Mays, Gaby can be found teaching high school students about social sciences research at New Voters or planning free-of-cost Model United Nations Conferences with Columbia Education Simulations (CESIMS) – all with the goal of working with young people to find their place in conversations about politics.

Skylar Schiltz-Rouse

Skylar Schiltz-Rouse is a senior majoring in General Anthropology. Her research focuses on understanding China and Nepal’s political, economic, and social relations through transboundary language learning efforts in Nepal. Hoping to explore the ways in which Mandarin language learning is transcending borders. Having grown up as a black American at a Chinese immersion school in the United States, and experienced living abroad in China, India and Nepal, she understands how powerful language can be and wants to complicate the discussion around transboundary language learning.

Reese Taylor

Reese Taylor is a senior majoring in Philosophy, History, and Human Rights. As a Mellon Mays Fellow, she intends to pursue research at the intersection of History and Human Rights. Specifically, how attempts to secure Human Rights but then ultimately Civil Rights for Black Americans in the 20th Century, shaped the role of Black education. Reese is ultimately interested in legal academic scholarship. Beyond Mellon Mays, Reese is a Laidlaw Scholar who founded The Voices in Action Initiative, a program cultivating public speaking, debate, and advocacy skills in Black youth. She also teaches Introduction to Law at Columbia's Double Discovery Center.