Postdoctoral Fellowships and Professional Development

The Collaborative will provide scholarly and professional development opportunities for scholars and students whose research focuses on racism, racial equity, and racial justice.

Public Engagement and Impact

The Anti-Racism Collaborative will partner with the Center for Academic Innovation to provide programming for anti-racism scholars to explore diverse forms of public engagement. This might include special experiences including events, workshops and other learning opportunities, and space and time to network with other like-minded faculty across disciplines.

Anti-Racism Collaborative Postdoctoral Fellows

Through the Anti-Racism Collaborative, the NCID will partner with U-M diversity scholars and academic units to offer postdoctoral fellowships for early career scholars whose research/scholarship focuses on racism, racial equity, and/or racial justice. Priority will be given to applicants for whom there is strong potential for research collaboration with current projects led by U-M faculty and/or U-M academic units. Applications will require a strong development and mentoring plan with U-M faculty mentor(s). The NCID currently hosts a number of postdoctoral fellows whose research/scholarship focuses on social inequality and justice, who will participate in a broader scholarly and learning community with new Anti-Racism Collaborative Fellows. Fellows will be provided a variety of professional development and networking opportunities to support their scholarly and professional growth and development.

Postdoctoral Reflections

As an Anti-Racism Collaborative Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Center for Institutional Diversity, I had the incredible opportunity to contribute to the racial justice efforts of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and the wider University of Michigan community. Specifically, in my capacity as a fellow, I helped to design, launch, and lead the Ford School’s Center for Racial Justice. Dr. Celeste Watkins-Hayes, with the support of the Ford School and the Provost’s office, launched the center in Fall 2021 with hopes of sparking conversations and creating space for discourse at the intersection of race and public policy. In anticipation of the center’s launch, we took pen to paper in summer 2020 to do blue-sky dreaming at a critical time in our nation’s and world’s history. The confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial reckoning catalyzed by Mr. George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer galvanized us into action. In laying the foundation for the center’s mission, we dreamed of a space where we could nurture and uplift scholars, policymakers, activists, and artists to create a beautiful tapestry of racial justice changemakers whose contributions span diverse fields and whose voices are critically important to policy conversations. As we enter our third year, we have been able to create such a community by building out our impact across four key areas: (1) education and programming; (2) research and policy engagement; (3) catalytic impact; and (4) community engagement. From our well-attended Racial Foundations of Public Policy speaker series and our Racial Justice in Practice workshops to a robust Visiting Fellows Program and growing research and community engagement infrastructure, the CRJ has emerged as an intellectual hub for changemakers working at the intersection of race and public policy. As such, the CRJ has been able to meaningfully complement and bolster the Ford School’s and U-M’s commitment to anti-racism and racial justice. My individual contributions to this impactful work were supported and enriched by the National Center for Institutional Diversity and its Anti-Racism Collaborative.

—Dom Adams-Santos, ARC Postdoctoral Fellow 2021–2023