The TIAA-CREF Ruth Simms Hamilton Fellowship recognizes cutting-edge, graduate-level research, which furthers the study of African Diaspora. 

The 2005 recipients are:

• Tsitsi Jaji, Cornell University, “Diaspora to Continental Drift: The Impact of the Diaspora on Contemporary African Writing and Film”
• Luis M. Gómez, SUNY at Stonybrook, “Embracing Black; Urban Culture, Blackness, and the Formation of Peruvian National Discourse, 1919 – 1970”
• Kelly Duke-Bryant, Johns Hopkins University, “Black but not African: Francophone Black Diaspora and the Revue des Colonies, 1834-1842”

Thurka Sangaramoorthy from the University of California (San Francisco & Berkeley) was awarded alternate status for her work “Differences, Disparities, and Disease: The Effects of Conceptualizing Race and Ethnicity as Categories of Risk on HIV/AIDS in Miami”.

The fellowship The TIAA-CREF Ruth Simms Hamilton Research Fellowship was established to honor the memory and outstanding work of Dr. Ruth Simms Hamilton, the former Michigan State University Professor and TIAA Trustee. Professor Hamilton was a TIAA Trustee from 1989 to 2003 and during her 35-year career at Michigan State University she was a highly regarded sociology professor and a faculty member of the African Studies Center, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Center for Advanced Study of International Development. She was an early pioneer of research concerning the African Diaspora - the study of the dispersion and settlement of African peoples once they left the African continent.

2005 TIAA-CREF Ruth Simms Hamilton Fellowship Award Panel of Distinguished Judges

Dr. Marietta Baba – Dean, Michigan State University
Dr. Carole Boyce Davies – Director & Professor, Florida International University
Dr. David Barry Gaspar – Professor, Duke University
Dr. Steven James Gold – Professor, Michigan State University
Dr. Michael Gomez – Professor and Department Chair, New York University; Director, ASWAD
E. Laverne Jones, Esq. – Vice President and Corporate Secretary, TIAA-CREF
Dr. Robert O’Neil – Professor, University of Virginia School of Law
Dr. Colin Palmer – Professor, Princeton University
Dr. P. Sterling Stuckey – Professor Emeritus, University of California at Riverside
Dr. Ronald Thompson – CEO and Chairman, Midwest Stamping Inc.
Dr. Margaret Washington – Professor, Cornell University
Dr. Clifton R. Wharton, Jr. – Former Chairman & CEO, TIAA-CREF; President Emeritus,
Michigan State University; Former Chancellor, SUNY System