The Fellowship Committee of NESAH is pleased to announce Yannick Etoundi as the recipient of the 2025 John Coolidge Research Fellowship.

Yannick is a doctoral candidate at the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Brown University and the 2024-25 Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow at the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. His main area of focus is on the colonial built environments of the African continent and the African diaspora, with a special emphasis on racial slavery, abolition, and colonialism. His dissertation explores the relationship between colonial architecture and emancipation in the French vieilles colonies (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Reunion, French Guiana) between 1848 and 1900. Trained as an architect, he has worked in architectural firms based in Yukon (Canada) and Tokyo (Japan) and holds experience in curation and public humanities.

The Coolidge Fellowship will support Yannick's research for his dissertation, entitled "Abolishing Racial Slavery, Building a French Colonial Utopia:  Architecture and Emancipation in the "Vieilles Colonies," 1848-1900,". Racial slavery was officially abolished for a second time in the French colonial empire in 1848. Yet, immediately, the discontinuities between the promises of freedom advanced by French Republicanism and the restrictions on Black life that ensued were made visible in the built environment of the vieilles colonies of Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, and Reunion. This dissertation project investigates how emancipation reshaped the colonial built environment of France's former slave colonies. Importantly, through this unfolding, it aims to understand how freedpeople rebuild their lives in this post-emancipation colonial landscape. Here, the historical experience of emancipation is positioned as a major force shaping the development of French colonial architecture and urbanism during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Congratulations, Yannick!