Announcing the Record’s 2024 Fellows!
The Peoples’ Media Record is thrilled to introduce the group of wonderful individuals we selected for this year’s Preserving and Archiving Community Media Fellowship and Philly Resistance Histories Fellowship.
The Preserving and Archiving Community Media Fellowship is generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Philly Resistance Histories Fellowship is generously funded by the Independence Public Media Foundation.
Congratulations to our selected fellows! Your commitment to uplifting community histories and memory work in our city is truly inspiring.
Preserving and Archiving Community Media Fellows
(in alphabetical order by last name)
From April to December, the Preserving and Archiving Community Media fellows will embark on a journey from April to December to enhance their archiving and preservation skills and develop comprehensive plans for the long-term care of their local neighborhood, community, and movement histories while building community power.
Rasheed Z. Ajamu
I’m a community-centered journalist seeking to learn how to better serve my community’s preservation by blending my journalism with archival practices.
Grace Fan
Grace (she/her) is a volunteer with Asian Americans United (AAU) and will be working with the AAU archives to help support the No Arena in Chinatown campaign. She is looking forward to finding wisdom, treasures, and through-lines in the AAU archives that will help support the current campaign as the community tries to fight off predatory development that threatens the existence of a crucial Asian American cultural/historical neighborhood in Philadelphia.
Maleka Fruean
Maleka Fruean is a writer, community organizer and community journalist for Germantown Info Hub, and a mother of three teens and one toddler. She hopes to learn and share ways to archive and preserve her neighborhood’s stories that are culturally relevant, intentional, and community-building!
Tina Morton
Tina Morton is a media activist, video oral historian, Scribe Video Facilitator and Associate Professor at Howard University, deeply committed to facilitating members of community groups in telling their own stories in their own voice. She has taught preteens to seniors, from Senegal to South Philly, how to use media for social activism. Through this fellowship Tina will archive her 20 years of video footage of the Philadelphia’s ODUNDE Festival https://www.odundefestival.org/
Krystal Strong
I am Philly scholar-organizer whose research and political work focuses on youth and community activism, educational justice, and Black social movements in Africa and the U.S. I serve as archive director of The MOVE Activist Archive, a community archiving project to preserve the revolutionary history of The MOVE Organization. I am excited to connect with, learn from, and collaborate with other community members and institutions that are working to preserve our local histories and memories!
Chanina Wong
My name’s Chanina (she/her) and I am a community archive coordinator & organizer for VietLead: a grassroots organization that has collected community stories & archival research from Philadelphia + South Jersey’s Southeast Asian community since 2016. I’m eager to refine how to best care for these stories of refugee resistance & resilience, including resource-sharing and collaborating with other preservationists & storytellers in solidarity, assiduity & collective liberation. <3
Ainsley Wynn Eakins
Fellowship Cohort Facilitator
I am a special collections librarian, community archivist, and memory worker who connects other cultural workers through playful and critical forms of research. I want to amplify the efforts of our fellows by curating spaces to share relevant resources and skills that will provides nuanced, informed, and creative possibilities in service of their projects.
Philly Resistance Histories Fellows
(in alphabetical order by last name)
The Philly Resistance Histories fellows will explore and reckon with stories of social movements in Philadelphia while gaining research skills and connecting the past to the present through the lens of power, resistance, and storytelling.
Syeda Akther
Hi my name is Syeda and I’m excited to start this fellowship and get the chance to know everyone who’s involved in it as well.
Sam Donagi
Sam (he/him) is an Iranian Jewish 17 year old trans guy interested in studying the history of Philadelphia’s queer rights and environmental justice movements.
DJ Graves
I’m a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania studying Africana Studies and Urban Studies. I look forward to cementing histories of activism and Black Joy found within West Philadelphia.
Amya Lee
I’m looking forward to talking to and learning from the other fellows, I enjoy the topics they are all involved with.
Nabryia Mayfield
As a political science student, I believe it is our job as citizens of the world to care for everyone who identifies as such. This fellowship will allow me to combine both my academic knowledge and my commitment to social justice. I know that by participating in this fellowship, I will join a community looking to make positive change.
Maria De Los Angeles Mendez
Hello, My name is Maria I was born and raised in Philly, and I am excited to learn more about my city’s history.
Ruth Mercedes
Ruth Mercedes (She/her) is a current senior at Haverford College. Her research explores the intersections between gender, race, and archival practice. She is excited to explore the long history of certain abolitionist spaces in Philadelphia through the Resistance Histories Fellowship.
Purnima Palawat
I’m passionate about community archives and storytelling, and how we create communities of care and resistance. I want to explore more about the liberatory potential of art, horizontal collaboration, and decolonization. I hope to meet other people engaged in this work and learn from each other.
Seema Parmar
I am a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania studying mathematical economics and environmental studies. I am hoping to further explore Philadelphia’s history with environmental justice and activism.
Andrew Yang
My name is Andrew Yang, and I am a student at Neumann Goretti High school. I am a hard-working person and I am pretty easy going. I am excited to get to learn about the topics that I will be researching.
Marguerite Hemmings
Fellowship Cohort Coordinator
I am the Cohort Coordinator for this fellowship season and am super excited to build relationships with the research fellows and witness how this work brings them closer to Philly’s legacies of social movement.