Mungai Mutonya, teaching professor of African and African American studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has received a 2020 Carnegie African Diaspora & International Institute of Education Fellowship to pursue an educational project with the University of Nairobi. The Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program supports projects within the African higher education sector.
The Carnegie program has awarded 471 fellowships since 2013. Mutonya’s project, titled “Collaborative Research and Graduate Training and/or Mentoring: Interdisciplinary Focus on Language Contact, Migration, Innovation and Identity,” will focus on the intersections of language, identity construction and urban resettlement within communities of African immigrants residing in Nairobi. The fellowship will aid in the collaboration between the two universities.
Mutonya has contributed to several books and journal articles, highlighting sociolinguistic changes in African communities. He has taught courses on African studies and Swahili at the university.
