The Beniba–Bonn Fellowship seeks to support early career scholars, scholar-activists, or create professionals (up to 10 years after their PhD). Each round, the scholarship is targeted at scholars based in a particular region, working on questions of slavery, its aferlives, and Strong Asymmetrical Dependencies (SADs) related to this region. The 2027/2028 fellowship is dedicated to the Caribbean. 

As part of this visiting fellowship, the successful applicant will be invited to work in both Glasgow and Bonn for periods of 3 to 6 weeks each between September and June. 

The Beniba Centre, the first Centre focused on slavery and its afterlife in Scotland, aims to focus attention on slavery and its legacies in Scotland and globally, through academic research, public events, and engagement with ongoing anti-racist activism and reparative justice. Named after Beniba a woman who was held in slavery by Robert Cunningham Graham, former Rector of the University of Glasgow (1785–1787), the Beniba Centre focuses attention on the erased archives and afterlives of slavery transtemporally and transspatially. At Glasgow, the scholar will be given access to the University of Glasgow Library, Archives and Special Collections, and invited to take part in conversations, dialogues, and seminars with faculty, postgraduate researchers, including but not limited to the MSc in Reparatory Justice led in partnership with the University of the West Indies. 

The BCDSS is a Cluster of Excellence funded by the German Excellence Strategy. At the BCDSS we investigate profound social dependencies such as slavery, serfdom, debt bondage, and other forms of persisting dependency across epochs, regions, and cultures. Our overall aim during the BCDSS’ first (2019–2025) and second (2026–2032) funding phases is to overcome the concept of “slavery versus freedom” established as a binary. Instead, we propose the new key concept of “strong asymmetrical dependency” to explore all durable forms of bondage across time and space. At the BCDSS, the Fellow will be given full access to all library facilities at the University of Bonn and is invited to participate in our regular Joseph C. Miller Memorial lectures, research seminars, workshops, conferences and other research activities organized by the BCDSS research community.

During their time in Glasgow and Bonn, the Fellow will be asked to deliver a lecture on their research at each institution.