On June 24-26, 2022, it was a great honor to have our fourth (and first in-person) Mellon UMD Diaspora seminar meeting co-hosted by the Kwame Nkrumah Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana (UGA). The seminar meeting included a discussion and tour of two major transatlantic slave trade ports ("slave castles") at Cape Coast and Elmina, Ghana.

In 2019, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded the University of Maryland's African American Studies Department a $500,000 grant to support an African/Black Diaspora seminar focusing on the interactions and relationships between first and second generations of African immigrants native-born African American populations in the U.S. The Mellon-funded project, "Race/Ethnicity and Gender in a Shifting Demographic and Racial Climate," brought together new and pertinent perspectives from distinguished scholars across many disciplines offering a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of racial and ethnic identities in the U.S. and the critical gender issues that overlap both, as black/African diaspora populations' shift and change in the United States. Sharing our findings with faculty and students on university and community college campuses, as well as in public venues, provide a fuller understanding of the African diaspora in the U.S. Sharon Harley, Associate Professor, is the principal investigator and project director of this Mellon project. The UMD/UGA advisory board consists of professors Askosua Ampofo (UGA), Lynn Bolles (emerita, UMD), and Mary Osirim (Bryn Mawr).

In addition to the prominent interdisciplinary African/Black/Diaspora scholars, a smaller cohort of doctoral students participated in the seminar meeting. A unique feature of each seminar meeting was the undergraduate student participants' involvement, who presented their outstanding research and community-based engagement.  

A distinguished educational and cultural institution co-hosted each of the seminar meetings and public events, including the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans & the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland; the Center for Black Visual Culture at New York University; the Chadwick Boseman School of Fine Arts at Howard University and the Smithsonian Institution's Portrait Gallery of Art. 

The attached group photo of the Mellon UMD and UGA seminar participants on June 25, 2022, was taken in front of the Institute of African Studies.