The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Department of History, are pleased to announce the Bernard and Fern Badzin Graduate Fellowship in Holocaust and Genocide Studies has been awarded to Wahuta Siguru.
Siguru's research interests are in the Sociology of Media, Genocide, Mass Violence and Atrocities (specifically on issues of representation of conflicts in Africa such as Darfur and Rwanda), Collective Memory, and perhaps somewhat tangentially Democracy and Development in Africa.
Siguru was born and raised in Mombasa, Kenya and attended Moi University Law School from 2003-2007 and moved to Minnesota in 2007 completing a double major in Sociology and Global Studies at the University of Minnesota in 2010.
He spent a year doing research with Professor Tade Okediji, (University of Minnesota Applied Economics) on ethnicity and ethnic group formation in Africa, which resulted in a co-authored paper presented at the 2013 Africa Conference in Austin Texas. The paper will also be presented at the African Studies Association Conference in Baltimore Maryland later this year.
Siguru began coursework towards a PhD in Sociology at the University of Minnesota in 2011 and is currently analyzing data collected in the summer of 2012 in Johannesburg and Nairobi which has resulted in a co-authored paper with Professor Joachim Savelsberg on Representations of Darfur in Western and African Media; this will be presented at the 2013 American Sociological Association Conference in New York.
The Badzin Fellowship pays a living stipend of $18,000, and the cost of tuition, mandatory fees and health insurance. An applicant must be a current student in a Ph.D. program in the College of Liberal Arts, currently enrolled in the first, second, third, or fourth year of study, and have a doctoral dissertation project in Holocaust and genocide studies.
The fellowship is awarded on the basis of the quality and scholarly potential of the dissertation project, the applicant's quality of performance in the graduate program, and the applicant's general scholarly promise.