Chicago Public Library is proud to announce the selection of its ten inaugural scholars, launching the scholarly track of its Renaissance Project’s Research Grant Program. This program, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, provides each scholar with a $4,000 grant to cover costs related to conducting research using the Black collections held in CPL at the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection at Woodson Regional Library and Special Collections at the Harold Washington Library Center. During short-term visits to the archive between April - August, they will draw inspiration from these materials to produce new scholarship and storytelling about Black history and culture. This inaugural cohort of Renaissance Project Research Scholars will also offer CPL programming to the public that highlights their research projects. The ten inaugural CPL Renaissance Project Research Scholars are:
Amari Amai (he/they) is a Black nonbinary storyteller, poet, playwright, and worldbuilder from Chicago. Amari’s work is rooted in oral tradition and archival resurrection on and off the page, bending time towards a pre-colonial past and decolonized future. Their work has received support from Tin House, Periplus Collective, Sundress Academy for the Arts, Hyde Park Art Center, The Watering Hole, Earthseed Black Family Archive, Vermont Studio Center, and Celebration Theater of Los Angeles. Amari founded the Crossroads Writers Collective, a communal writing group for Chicago-based Black queer folks. As a 2025 Pushcart Prize and 2026 Best of the Net nominee, they are developing their debut poetry collection and accompanying performance series. Amari is using the archive to recover stories of Black LGBTQ+ life on Chicago’s West Side.
Crossing Borders Music (CBM), founded in 2011 by Tom Clowes, is a multicultural organization of color that shares the stories and music of those with suppressed voices based on race, ethnicity, disability, gender, sexual orientation, other identity, or related trauma. CBM does this through free, accessible programs in community spaces in service and affirmation of our communities and collaborators and has become a leading, critically acclaimed interpreter of chamber music by composers from under-represented cultures. To do this, its musicians search and investigate non-traditional and unpublished collections of musical scores, including archived materials in family collections and specialized libraries. Violist Wilfred Farquharson, a multi-faceted studio, orchestral, and chamber musician is representing CBM in the archive. He has performed as principal violist of the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra (2022-2023 season); is a member of D-Composed Chicago, the Re-Collective and Matt Jones Orchestras; a substitute musician of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Sinfonietta, and is guest Assistant Principal of the Augusta Symphony Orchestra. Wilfred has recorded and performed for John Legend, Arthur Verocai, Carlos Simon, Burna Boy, and Andra Day, and holds a bachelor’s from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and a graduate degree with honors from the University of Southern California. Wilfred is researching classical music by Black Chicago composers.
Danielle A. Scruggs is a photographer, whose clients include the New York Times, AARP, the New Republic, Bon Appetit, People magazines, and ProPublica; a contributing writer to Teen Vogue, RogerEbert.com, Ebony, and The Triibe; a photo editor at The Wall Street Journal, Getty Images, Vox Media, ESPN, and Chicago Reader; and is currently a Visuals Editor at NPR. In 2015, Danielle founded Black Women Directors (BWD), creating a platform that celebrates Black women and nonbinary filmmakers. Through BWD, she has earned two Webby Awards and been featured in Marie Claire and New York Magazine's The Cut. Danielle holds a journalism degree from Howard University and a master’s in digital art from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Danielle’s archival research examines the contributions of Chicago’s Black female documentary filmmakers.
Desmond Owusu is a cultural worker, designer, and educator rooted in Chicago’s South Side, who creatively explores Black cultural memory, community life, and intergenerational learning. A first-generation Ghanaian American, Desmond uses his lived experience to bridge cultures and explore themes of family and community. As the Betty Shabazz International Charter Schools’ Director of Culture, he leads cultural programming that connects Black history to contemporary student experiences. He is also co-director of Azania Drum, a youth West African drumming and cultural education collective; outreach manager for Third World Press, the nation’s oldest independent African-centered publishing house; founding member of Fat Tiger Workshop; and founder of streetwear brands, Chicago Girls Do It Better and We All We Got. Desmond is researching the work of Chicago poet, playwright, activist and youth worker, Useni Eugene Perkins.
Jahanzaib “Jahan” Choudhry is a PhD candidate in History at Carnegie Mellon University whose work bridges academic research, archival practice, and community-based education. With a commitment to producing accessible knowledge outside traditional academic settings, Jahan is a core collaborator with the Saturday Free School for Philosophy and Black Liberation, and fosters dialogue between scholars, activists and communities in both Philadelphia and Chicago. His dissertation examines the relationship between world peace, anti-colonialism, and civil rights during the Cold War with a special emphasis on African American and South Asian activists. Jahan is also involved in a study of deindustrialization and its impact on the Black working class in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement and is using the archive to research the work of Chicago’s Black labor and political leaders.
Julia Hester is a mixed Black multimedia artist working with identity, memory, and history, who seeks world change through art. In 2025, Julia obtained a degree in animation with minors in illustration and art from DePaul University. While studying, Julia noticed the omission of the work of Black creatives in classes, and that fellow classmates often did not feature Black characters in their work. This led to Julia’s decision to incorporate her own identities into the narratives we see. Through an artist residency focused on arts and wellness with Black Alphabet, a Black LGBTQ+ nonprofit in Bronzeville, Julia interviewed Black participants, led self-portrait workshops and discussions on their image, identities, and lives. This project inspired Julia’s practice to further examine personal and community histories to expand current artistic narratives. Julia is researching the cartoonists of the Chicago Defender Newspaper.
Lishan AZ, associate professor of cinema and digital media at the University of California, Davis, is an interdisciplinary artist and storyteller working in immersive installation, photography, and film, illuminating narratives of collective resistance, marginalized histories and contemporary issues, freedom and the Black body. Lishan’s work has been on exhibit at Tokyo University of the Arts' Art Museum San Francisco’s Museum of African Diaspora, New Orleans’ Antenna Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Los Angeles’ Weekly’s Artopia and Electronic Entertainment Expo, among others. With an M.F.A. in interactive media and games from the University of Southern California, Lishan was Maryland Institute College of Art’s inaugural Game Designer in Residence. She received Forbes’ 30 under 30 in gaming, the Impact Award at the International Festival of Independent Games (Indiecade), and Best Gameplay at Games for Change. Lishan is researching Chicago’s Race Riots of 1919.
NaBeela Washington, a Chicago-based Black journalist, photographer, and community organizer, explores power, place, and possibility in overlooked communities by researching gaps in news access. Washington’s journalism centers long-term relationship building with communities rather than extractive reporting, and has appeared in Prism, City Bureau, Eater, The TRiiBE, Chicago Reader, and other outlets. In 2025, NaBeela founded 15 West, a newsroom covering Chicago's West Side utilizing accountability journalism and neurodiversity. Through 15 West, she has observed how information inequity shapes civic life, a pattern she attributes to decades of media exclusion. NaBeela also founded Lucky Jefferson, an arts publishing organization. She holds an MA in creative writing and english from Southern New Hampshire University and is using the archive to research media coverage of Chicago’s Black West Side communities.
Nyla Williams is the cultural heritage resource coordinator for The Descendants Project in Louisiana. Nyla curates heritage materials for the Louisiana River Parishes, researches the region’s plantation-to-petrochemical history, and leads efforts to secure national historic landmark and historic district designations for culturally significant communities. She is pursuing her MLIS degree at Louisiana State University focusing on cultural heritage resource management and archival studies. Nyla has completed a Harvard University research fellowship, an intensive conservation program with the Getty Research Institute, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. She is researching Black Chicago environmental activism in the archive.
Taylor Ann Mazique, a PhD candidate in History with a concentration in Black Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago, is a Black Girlhood scholar focusing on the histories of Black Girlhood in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, where she has spent most of her life. She is also the founder of the Black Girl Archive, established in 2024 to address the archival silences surrounding the lives of Black girls in Englewood. She employs creative, Black girl-led research methodologies in her work to provide them with opportunities, space, and resources to lead their own liberation (if needed) and/or articulate their freedom, wants, needs, dreams, and desires. Taylor is using the archive to further her research on Black Girlhood in Chicago’s Englewood community.