NYU Shanghai alumna Mahder Takele Teshome ’22 has been awarded the prestigious Knight-Hennessy Scholarship. The scholarship will fully fund her PhD studies in anthropology at Stanford University. Mahder, who is from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, will join the 6th cohort of Knight-Hennessy Scholars and will become just the second NYU Shanghai graduate to win the award, after Shirley Zhao ’19.
The fellowship, created by Nike co-founder Phil Knight and former Stanford President John Hennessy, seeks to educate and prepare a community of scholars for leadership roles in academia, industry, government, nonprofits, and the community at large. She and the other awardees will receive funding for up to three years of graduate studies at Stanford.
Mahder, who is interested in the cultural overlaps between Africa and the Middle East as demonstrated through language, religion, and tradition, plans to focus her PhD studies on Afro-Palestinian culture. She was inspired to pursue this path after beginning her scholarly journey at NYU Shanghai and self-designing her major in Religion and Language, with a minor in Hebrew and Judaic studies. She also completed two research projects with the Deans’ Undergraduate Research Fund, and studied at an NYU global site in Israel.
In addition to the funding she will receive, Mahder will join a cohort of 85 Knight-Hennessy scholars who hail from 29 countries. Alongside their studies, they will also participate in the King Leadership Development Program, which includes workshops, lectures, projects, and experiences to strengthen participants’ transformational leadership capabilities.
Mahder says that one of the most appealing aspects of the scholarship is the community of scholars she shares the experience with. “Due to COVID, I had three semesters studying remotely, and by nature of my self-designed major, I was the only person on my academic journey,” she said. “One of the major things I was looking for in grad school was a community of scholars with different backgrounds who I will be able to connect with,” she said.
Mahder at an art exhibition of Ethio-Israeli artists at Technion University in Haifa, Israel.
Mahder developed her research project on the Afro-Palestinian experience while studying in Israel. It wasn’t until halfway through her senior spring semester in Israel that she learned from a friend about Afro-Palestinians and the lack of scholarship and research that existed around the group. “I thought it was quite interesting that this group of people with a significantly different skin color have been able to go to this place where they weren't necessarily welcome in the beginning but now have reached a point where they call themselves Palestinian,” she said.
She plans to use her study of the integration of Afro-Palestinians into Palestinian society as a model for understanding the experiences of Africans in other Middle Eastern countries. Assistant Professor of Anthropology M. Yunus Rafiq, who advised her at NYU Shanghai, enthusiastically supports Mahder’s future research plans, noting that her scholarly contributions in this understudied area will be welcomed in the field of anthropology. While diaspora studies have primarily focused on Caribbean and Latin America areas, “there is a shift to examining the African diaspora in places like Iran and Palestine,” he said. “Mahder's study on Afro-Palestinians would be a welcome intervention in understanding the African diaspora in Islamic communities and in settler-colonial regimes.”
After she finishes her PhD, Mahder looks forward to continuing in academia as a professor of anthropology, where she aspires to encourage more Africans to engage in the social sciences and humanities.
For more Global Awards news and opportunities, contact shanghai.global.awards@nyu.edu.