The University of Kansas has been selected to receive its first-ever Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar Award to research chronic health conditions among African and African-descendant populations, according to a news release from KU.

The 2019-2020 Sawyer seminar, “Chronic Conditions: Knowing, Seeing & Healing the Body in Global Africa,” will bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars for eight public lectures and four performances at locations across Kansas.

The goal of the seminar is to develop new ways of thinking about the historical, social and political processes that have given rise to disproportionately high rates of chronic diseases among Africans, African immigrants and African-Americans, according to the news release.

The project is co-directed by Kathryn Rhine, KU associate professor of anthropology; Abel Chikanda, KU assistant professor of African and African-American studies and geography; and Cassandra Mesick Braun, curator of global indigenous art in KU’s Spencer Museum of Art, in partnership with the Kansas African Studies Center and the Hall Center for the Humanities.

Focusing on communities that share African roots, the seminar will explore how legacies of slavery, colonialism and segregation have rendered black bodies particularly vulnerable to misapprehension, oppression and exploitation in medicine, public health and development initiatives, according to the release.

Dates and locations for the event will be set in spring 2019.