Laila Nasher ('25) Named Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow

The Department of Anthropology at Harvard University is thrilled to be able to share that Laila Nasher ('25 current sophomore, joint concentrator in History and Anthropology with a secondary field in Ethnicity, Migration and Rights) has been named a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow.

Laila shares with us:

I'm extremely honored to have received this fellowship, especially with the realization that I am the first Yemeni fellow in MMUF's long history. Through this opportunity, I will be researching how South Yemeni women experienced political and social change following independence from Britain and later unification with North Yemen and explore female only political events as an ethnographic space. I am thankful for both the Anthropology and History departments and Harvard's first generation community. I am especially grateful for Professor Steve Caton's mentorship who provided me with my introduction to anthropology support. Professor Caton treated me both as an intellectual equal and as a mentee and viewed my own personal experiences with the same academic insight as he did published work. 

The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program (MMUF) of Harvard College selects a small cohort of sophomores to join a tightly-knit research community to conduct independent research in close collaboration with a faculty mentor and engage in pre-professional development workshops and seminars on pursuing doctoral degrees, research, and life in the academy- during their junior and senior years. The MMUF program exists to counter the underrepresentation of marginalized groups in college and university faculties nationwide, specifically in fields within the humanities and humanistic social sciences, and thus, encourages students of color, students from marginalized backgrounds, and others with a demonstrated commitment to racial diversity to pursue academic careers. 

MMUF program at Harvard is jointly supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and by funds from Harvard College. Its name symbolically connects the mission to the stellar achievements of Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, educator, college president, and civil rights activist. The program has been at Harvard since 1990. For more than a decade to date, Harvard College has co-funded the program enabling more talented undergraduates to join the fellowship program.