Archives Research Fellowship Program at The Driskell Center

THE DRISKELL CENTER ANNOUNCES FELLOWS FOR 2025-2026 ARCHIVES RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM

COLLEGE PARK, MD. – The David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, is pleased to announce that two fellows have been chosen for the 2025-2026 Archives Research Fellowship Program at The Driskell Center.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

The Archives Research Fellowship Program at The Driskell Center, funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is an opportunity for scholars, artists, curators, and cultural workers at any career stage (including graduate students, early-career researchers, and independent scholars) from diverse backgrounds, fields, and perspectives to have unprecedented access to new collections and conduct original scholarship rooted in the Center’s rich archival holdings. Each fellow will receive a stipend along with travel and lodging support for a short-term residency of up to three weeks at the Center and research support from the Archives team throughout the year. 

ABOUT THE FELLOWS

Jewel Champbell is a multimedia artist and archivist from Brooklyn, New York, and an alumna of Morgan State University. Her work explores how independent publishing such as zines, artist books, catalogs, and ephemera preserves Black culture and collective memory. Through her research project Printed Grounds, she examines how Black artists and collectives use print media as tools of resistance, self-expression, and historical documentation. Her practice centers on ethical, community-focused archiving that amplifies Black voices and expands access to historical materials. She is committed to honoring the lived experiences of Black communities by making archives accessible, participatory, and meaningful.

Katherine Gregory, Ph.D. is a Visiting Assistant Professor of American Art at Wake Forest University, specializing in American art from the colonial period to the present, African American art, art and ecology, and archive theory. Her current book project is titled The Wanderer’s Eye: Robert Duncanson, Radical Mobility, and the Black American Artist Abroad. This book argues that Robert Duncanson’s landscape paintings and transatlantic travel were acts of radical Black liberation in the nineteenth century. This is the first book to analyze Duncanson’s travel-based landscape paintings, and to argue that his self-directed movement – his “radical mobility” – was an activist practice. Gregory earned her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin in 2024.

ABOUT THE DRISKELL CENTER The Driskell Center is a creative incubator dedicated to a world where Black artists exist at its center. We invite inquiry, experimentation, and dialogue to reexamine histories and shape shared futures. 

All programs at The Driskell Center are free and open to the public, and the facility is wheelchair accessible. For further information regarding exhibitions and activities at The Driskell Center, please call 301-314-2615 or visit driskellcenter.umd.edu. The Driskell Center’s programming is supported in part by a grant from the Maryland State Arts Council and private donors. 

For inquiries about the fellowship, the application process, or the Driskell Center’s collections, please contact us at archives-driskellcenter@umd.edu with the subject line “Archives Research Fellowship.”