Exploring Postcolonial Statecraft and Anti-Blackness in Trinidad
Leniqueca Welcome, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, was awarded a 9-month Kluge Fellowship from the Library of Congress to work on her book manuscript.
Dr. Welcome is a multimodal anthropologist and designer from Trinidad and Tobago. Her research and teaching interests are postcolonial statecraft, racialization, gendering, securitization, visuality, and affect. Her work combines more traditional ethnographic methods with photography and collage.
The Kluge Center at the Library of Congress supports interdisciplinary research in the humanities and social sciences. Scholars in various fields can access extensive collections, including the world’s largest law library and diverse materials like manuscripts, maps, music, films, and more. Established in 2000 with a $60 million endowment from John W. Kluge, its Fellows have gone on to achieve notable academic success and public recognition, making lasting contributions as public intellectuals.Twelve Kluge Fellowships are awarded annually. The fellowship will enable Welcome to focus on her first book manuscript, which examines criminalization and the operation of colonial technologies of anti-blackness over space and time in Trinidad.
Welcome’s writing can also be found in venues such as Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, Multimodality & Society, and Cultural Anthropology.
About: Leniqueca Welcome received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology with certificates in urban studies and experimental ethnography from the University of Pennsylvania in 2021. Prior to starting her Ph.D. program, she was trained as an architect at the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and worked at ACLA architecture (a design firm in Trinidad) until 2015.
Learn more about Kluge Fellowships from the Library of Congress.