Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University and the Center for Palestine Studies Welcome Paola Cossermelli Messina as the 2021-2022 Public Humanities Radio Play Fellow!
Paola Cossermelli Messina is a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology at Columbia University in the early stages of her dissertation exploring music, identity and diaspora in and between Lebanon and Brazil. She holds a B.A. in Music and Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and an M.A. in Media Studies from The New School, with a specialization in sound. Her Master's thesis on the oral histories of Iranian women musicians was awarded a Middle East Studies Association's Graduate Student Paper Prize in 2016. Her most recent thesis and project, an experimental ethnography on a jukebox in a lesbian bar, was presented at Harvard's 2021 Graduate Music Forum. A sound designer and audio engineer by trade, she has worked in film and podcasts, and for the past 5 years has produced and edited the Arab Studies Institute's podcast الوضع. She teaches audio workshops at Sarah Lawrence College and, prior to pursuing her PhD, was the Project Manager for CUNY-Creative Arts Team's program Sound Thinking NYC, a free summer intensive for NYC high schoolers interested in careers in music production and audio engineering. She has been a Mason Endowed Fellow (2020-21) and was selected by the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities and the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University as the 2021-22 Public Humanities Radio Play Fellow.
About the Public Humanities Graduate Fellowships at SOF/Heyman Center
The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities provides funded opportunities for graduate students to explore the public dimensions of their work. While each fellowship has distinct features and requirements, during the funding period, students work closely with at least one community organization, participate in methods workshops, and present their projects in the Building Publics series.
To learn more about the Center's NO PLACE | LA MAKAN | لا مكان program, including information about this season's commissioned playwrights, ancillary programing and partners, click here.
NO PLACE | LA MAKAN | لا مكان is a project of the Center for Palestine Studies produced in partnership with the A. M. Qattan Foundation, with support from Taawon, The Tides Foundation, and the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.