Two 91丝瓜视频 professors awarded 2026 Dorothy Killiam Fellowships
Professors Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey and Jill Baumgartner will lead innovative research focusing on anti-Black carceral systems and climate-related health risks respectively听
Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey and Jill Baumgartner have received 2026 Dorothy Killam Fellowships, one of Canada鈥檚 most prestigious academic honours. Eight Fellowships were awarded across the country.听
The award, worth $80,000 a year, allows mid-career scholars to focus for up to two years on transformative research that has the potential to improve Canadian lives. The funds are meant to allow the institution to defray the costs of covering the winners鈥� teaching and administrative duties.听
Tracing anti-Black carceral systems across the Americas听
Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey, (Nii Laryea Osabu I, 础迟谤茅办辞谤 奥茅 狈貌测补补 惭补苍迟蝉猫), Associate Professor and William Dawson Scholar in the Department of History and Classical Studies, received support for his project 鈥�Exploring Black Self-Determination, Carceral Systems, and Repression in the Americas, 1870-2000.鈥�听
As a professor of post-Reconstruction United States and African Diaspora history, Adjetey examines the social, cultural, intellectual, political and military histories of transnational Black freedom struggles that connected North America to the broader Atlantic World.听听
The Fellowship will enable him to conduct archival research in the United States, Canada, Jamaica and Brazil and support the writing of a book tracing the origins of anti-Black carceral systems, from Reconstruction-era racial terror to the rise of mass incarceration of Black males from the 1960s to 2000s, to 鈥渜耻补谤补苍迟颈苍e鈥� Black liberation movements.听
础诲箩别迟别测鈥檚 project is expected to yield groundbreaking, multi-disciplinary analysis that will explain how racial and gender-based hierarchies are produced and maintained within political systems that privilege some groups at the expense of others.听
Adjetey said he hopes to use history to improve education programs in Quebec and Ontario prisons, particularly for those who identify as Black and or Indigenous.听
He is the author of Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: The Making of a Pan-African North America, which received the 2024 Governor General鈥檚 History Award for Scholarly Research and the 2024 Best Scholarly Book in Canadian History Prize from the Canadian Historical Association, among other honours.听
Advancing South-North research on climate-health resilience听听
Jill Baumgartner, Professor and William Dawson Scholar in the School of Population and Global Health, was awarded the Fellowship to advance strategies to reduce climate-related health risks听and strengthen climate-health resilience.听听
Climate change poses an escalating threat to public health, intensifying extreme events such as heat waves, floods and wildfires. Baumgartner鈥檚 research examines how environmental and social conditions shape people鈥檚 exposure to pollution and climate hazards, and how policies and interventions can reduce those exposures and their health impacts.听听
She also serves as the inaugural Director of the 91丝瓜视频 Centre for Climate Change and Health (MC3H), an interdisciplinary hub for research, knowledge exchange and policy engagement launched in late 2024.听听
Through the Fellowship, Baumgartner will advance research on climate-health resilience by gaining comparative insight from two cities where she leads research projects: Montreal and Accra, Ghana. Both cities face accelerating climate risks, with warming in Canada and sub-Saharan Africa occurring at faster-than-global-average rates. Yet they differ markedly in climate, infrastructure, governance and patterns of urban development.听听听
Working closely with policymakers and community partners in both cities, her team will co-produce knowledge on climate-health risks and vulnerabilities and identify solutions to reduce harms. The work promises to help close research and policy gaps and strengthen South-North collaboration while expanding the MC3H鈥檚 collaborative research activities.听
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