FIU Announces Karell Travel Grant
Karell Travel has partnered with Florida International University’s Department of Africa and African Diaspora Studies to create an annual travel grant that will allow a deserving graduate student the opportunity to travel to Africa in furtherance of their studies.
From the official press release:
FIU’s African & African Diaspora Studies Program (AADS) has just received a generous gift from Norman and Craig Pieters of Karell’s African Dream Vacations to fund academic travel to Africa. The Pieters, South African expatriates, operate a family-owned travel agency that specializes in travel to the African continent.
AADS offers a graduate certificate, and a graduate program, including an M.A. in AADS along with a combined M.A. in AADS/Ph.D in Global & Sociocultural Studies (Anthropology, Geography, and Sociology), and a combined M.A. in AADS/Ph.D in International Relations. Both AADS graduate students and faculty frequently travel to Africa for research, fieldwork, teaching, or academic conferences. Such travel is expensive, and African academic institutions have limited resources.
The Karell Grant will help make Africa-bound academic travel possible for AADS M.A. students and faculty. As Craig Pieters notes, “the mission of the African and Africa Diaspora Studies Program is one with which we identified immediately. Through this grant we hope to, in our small way, contribute to that mission by assisting a worthy student or scholar in traveling to Africa in furtherance of their studies.”
The three-year gift provides one round-trip ticket from Miami to any point in Africa per year. Each year, an AADS committee will select the winner from a pool of competitive proposals. A call for such proposals will go out shortly.
