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Month: June 2025

Sophia Goodfriend Named 2025 Harry Frank Guggenheim Research Fellow at Pembroke College Cambridge

June 23, 2025

Sophia Goodfriend

(CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom) — Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge has appointed Dr. Sophia Goodfriend as its next Harry Frank Guggenheim Research Fellow. Goodfriend will take up her post in October 2025.

Goodfriend is a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative. Her research examines the impact of big data and machine learning on military conflict in the Middle East. Outside of academia, she is an independent researcher with civil society organizations in the region and a freelance journalist.

The Harry Frank Guggenheim Research Fellowship was established at Pembroke College in 2011. It is a three-year award supporting post-doctoral research that increases the understanding of the causes, manifestations, and control of violence in the present world. Priority is given to candidates who make a compelling case for the relevance of potential findings for policies intended to reduce these ills. Goodfriend will be the fourth holder of the fellowship, which is sponsored by The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.

“Sophia Goodfriend is an outstanding scholar, and she is doing sharply contemporary research work on how AI impacts military conflict in the Middle East,“ said Lord Smith of Finsbury, Master of Pembroke. “This is important and challenging work, and her inclusion in Pembroke’s fellowship will enhance our knowledge and the breadth of our understanding of the world around us and its geopolitical fault lines.”

“I am delighted to join Pembroke College as the Harry Frank Guggenheim Research Fellow,” Goodfriend said. “My research and writing examine the impact of AI on military conflict in the Middle East and beyond. This research fellowship will provide a valuable opportunity to finish my first academic manuscript, an ethnographic account of how algorithmic surveillance and weapons systems are upending what it means to wage and live with war in Israel and Palestine. I hope that this research will further The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation’s essential work to understand the causes and controls of contemporary violence. I am honored to have the support of the foundation and to join a robust community of students and scholars at Pembroke College.”

“At a time when the rapid development of AI is having a profound effect on so many areas of human society, Sophia Goodfriend’s research on its uses in military conflict is crucial to our understanding of its developing impact on war and the people affected by it,” said Daniel F. Wilhelm, president of The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. “We are pleased to be able to support such important scholarship through the Harry Frank Guggenheim Research Fellowship and our continued partnership with Pembroke College.”

About Pembroke College

Founded in 1347, Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Its mission is to bring together the brightest students from the broadest range of backgrounds; nurture outstanding research; provide the very best educational opportunities; and by doing so, help to make a difference to the world.

Today, Pembroke is home to 440 undergraduate students, 300 postgraduate students, seventy-five fellows, and 180 staff. It supports a wide range of academic activities, including public lectures, seminars, conferences, and visiting scholar schemes. The fifty-fourth and current Master is Lord Smith of Finsbury PC. He will be succeeded as Master by Professor Polly Blakesley on October 1, 2025.

About The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation

The Foundation was established in 1929 by Harry Frank Guggenheim (1890–1971). An alumnus of Pembroke College, Guggenheim was a business leader, diplomat, and newspaper publisher. He served in both world wars and later focused the work of the Foundation on problems of violence, believing that humanity had failed to match its progress in science, technology, medicine, and industry with similar improvements in human relations.

Following Guggenheim’s death, a bequest established the Foundation’s current program of research grants to support distinguished and emerging scholars investigating pressing issues of violence worldwide.

For more information, contact:
Nyeleti Honwana, Senior Program Officer
info@hfg.org | 646.428.0971

The Harry Frank Guggenheim Welcomes Its 2025-2026 African Fellows

June 13, 2025

(NEW YORK) – The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation is pleased to announce the selection of its 2025–2026 HFG African Fellows. The twelve scholars were chosen through a rigorous peer-review process. All are doctoral candidates at African universities exploring important problems of violence related to the African continent.

Fellows are investigating topics across ten African countries, including political extremism, gender-based violence, postcolonial conflict, and counterterrorism. The fellowship provides each recipient with a research grant and support on research design, writing, and publishing. Additionally, leading scholars serve as mentors to the recipients throughout the fellowship.

Graphic showing photos of each of the African Fellows listed alphabetically.
FIRST ROW: Abdirizak Muhumed, Frezer Abera Hadebo, Aroob Alfaki, Tamia Botes, Nonhlanhla Gumede, and Lameck Kachena. SECOND ROW: Stanley Kiswaga, Kgomotso Komane, Faridah Muli, Azzeddine Tajjiou, Rukayat Usman, and Alida van der Walt.

In selecting the ​​recipients of the awards, the Foundation gave highest priority to research that addresses the causes, manifestations, or prevention of current problems of violence.

“This year’s cohort of African Fellows represents a diverse and dynamic set of researchers,” said HFG Senior Program Officer Nyeleti Honwana, who oversees the program. “The fellows’ projects ask important questions about the modern African state, current understandings of gendered violence, and the role of the arts in ameliorating conflict.”

The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation is a leader in creating and disseminating knowledge on the nature, consequences, and reduction of violence in its many forms, including war, crime, and human aggression.

2025–2026 Fellows and Research Topics

Aroob Alfaki (University of Khartoum, Social Anthropology) Reproduction of Inequalities or Construction of New Commonalities? Socio-Spatial and Cultural Reconfigurations of the Urban and the Rural in Sudan Between Revolution and War

Tamia Botes (University of Witwatersrand, Anthropology) Eldorado Park as Demonic Grounds: A Social History from 1960s–Present

Nonhlanhla Gumede (University of Pretoria, Social Work) Narratives of Male Perpetrators on Factors Contributing to Gender-Based Violence: A Case Study of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Frezer Abera Hadebo (Universiteit Stellenbosch, Political Science) Gendered Dimensions of Political Extremism and Nationalism in Northern Ethiopia: A Feminist Analysis of Conflict, Identity, and Women’s Resistance in Ethiopia

Lameck Kachena (University of Cape Town, Environmental and Geographical Sciences) Migration, Socioecological and Geopolitical Trajectories along the Great Limpopo and Chimanimani Transboundary Parks

Stanley Kiswaga (Makerere University, Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR)) Theatre for Development and the Neoliberal Divides: Rethinking “New Nation-Building” in “Post-Socialist Tanzania” 

Kgomotso Komane (University of Pretoria, Political Science and International Relations) An Intersecting Theoretical Analysis on Lesotho’s Struggle with Political Violence

Abdirizak Muhumed (University of the Witwatersrand, Political Science) Unfinished Imperialism and Lived Experiences of Occupation in Ogaden, 1994–2018

Faridah Muli (University of Nairobi, Department of Diplomacy and International Studies) Digital Technologies in Counterterrorism: Assessing US-Kenya Partnerships in Violent Extremism Prevention in the Horn of Africa

Azzeddine Tajjiou (Université Mohammed Premier, English Studies) Colonial Shadows and Post-Colonial Dreams: Exploring Corruption and Hope in Anglophone African Literature 

Rukayat Usman (University of Ibadan, Sociology/Public Policy) Violence Continuum and the Mobility Trajectories of Young Internally Displaced Persons Exiting Camps in Nigeria

Alida van der Walt (Stellenbosch University, Department of Music; Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest) Sensing Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in South Africa: Vocal Performance as Witness and Apology

For more information contact: 

Nyeleti Honwana, Senior Program Officer

info@hfg.org | 646.428.0971

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