Leaders of the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department have shared their ambitions for the new PhD program, which was announced last month by Columbia’s Graduate School of Arts and Science.
They say the highly interdisciplinary program will be a pioneering initiative aimed at deepening our understanding of Black histories, cultures, and intellectual traditions. They are confident it will foster the next generation of scholars, activists, and leaders dedicated to the study of people of African descent across the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, and beyond.
Applications for the inaugural class will open in fall of 2025. See more information.
Department leaders shared their ambitions recently in the video above produced by the university’s Office of Public Affairs.
The program will be the first doctoral degree of black studies offered in New York City, said department chair Mabel O. Wilson, the Nancy and George Rupp Professor of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and a professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies.
“More importantly for Columbia,” she said, “it really establishes the study of not only, black peoples in New York City, but also within the wider diaspora and across the continent.”
As a hub for global Black intellectual and cultural exchange, New York City — particularly Harlem — provides a unique backdrop for the program, which will offer students access to invaluable archives, cultural institutions, and the vibrant, ongoing history of Black life.
“It's an amazing crucible and context through which one can not only study the black world, but I would argue it's an opportunity to really, study the modern world,” Wilson said.
The new program builds on the foundation of Columbia’s renowned Institute for Research in African American Studies (IRAAS), established in 1993, and the university’s long-standing commitment to Black scholarship.
“We're continuing to build on that tradition and incorporate new areas of studies like black geographies, which is, an area of expertise by Dr. Brandi Summers, who is trained as a sociologist, but also deeply invested in black studies methods and ideologies and histories.”
Summers, an associate professor and the director of graduate studies in the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department, earned her PhD and MA in sociology from University of California, Santa Cruz.
Summers said the new PhD program will look to attract students who are curious.
“You don't have to have your perfect, plan,” she said. “You don't have to have your perfect topic, but at least you need to have this desire.”
“Our expectation is that you're going to do work that intimately connects to the black experience, whether that's in the past, understanding what can see, what we can conceive of as the present, and then perhaps thinking about various futures so there can be work.”
