LENIQUECA WELCOME
Email: [email protected]
Address: ESIA
1957 E Street, NW
601E
Washington, District of Columbia, 20052
PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS:
George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, August 2022—present
Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut
Assistant Professor of International Studies and Urban Studies, August 2021—July 2022
EDUCATION
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Ph.D. Cultural Anthropology (w/ Certificate of Urban Studies and Experimental Ethnography), August 2021.
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas
BArch. Architecture. Minor: Sustainability studies.
RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS
Key research areas include securitization and criminalization, space and place-making, processes of racialization and gendering, statecraft, sovereignty, affect, visuality.
SCHOLARLY PUBLICATIONS:
PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS
2024. "On and In Their Bodies: Masculinist Violence, Criminalization and Black Womanhood in Trinidad." Cultural Anthropology 39 (1): 37–63.
2022. " To Be Black Is to . . . : The Production of Blackness in and beyond Trinidad."Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 26 (2): 108–118.
2021. Welcome, Leniqueca A, and Deborah A. Thomas. “Abstraction, Witnessing, and Repair: or, How Multimodal Research Can Destabilize the Coloniality of the Gaze.” Multimodality & Society 1(3): 391-406.
2020. “The Infrastructures of Liberation at the End of the World: A Reflection on Disaster in the Caribbean.” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 24 (2): 96–109.
2014. “Class Status and Identity: A Semantic Reading of the Typical Trinidadian House.” Inquiry Volume, 16, May 27, 2017.
BOOK CHAPTERS
2023. “Wading in the Thick: A Sovereign Encounter Through Collage," in Sovereignty Unhinged: An Illustrated Primer for the Study of Present Intensities, Disavowals, and Temporal Derangements edited by Deborah A. Thomas and Joseph Masco. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT & NON-PEER REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS
2021. “Getting Away with Murder: Reflection on Policing in the Trinidadian City.” City & Society 33(1).
2020. “After the Ash and Rubble are Cleared: Anthropological Work for a Future.” American Anthropologist website, September 22, 2020.
2020. "Editorial Note: Ecocide." Pree Issue 5, April 22, 2020.
2018. “Turn Up the Volume.” Pree Issue 2, December 11, 2019.
2017. “Violent Gazes.” Anthropology News 58 (4): e347–50.
BOOK REVIEWS
Welcome, Leniqueca A. Review of Scammer's Yard: The Crime of Black Repair in Jamaica, by Jovan Scott Lewis. American Anthropologist, (March 2022):1-2.
INTERVIEWS
Welcome, Leniqueca. “Holding Our Sights: A conversation with Professor Leniqueca Welcome.” By Chinonye Alma Otuonye, American Anthropologist, November 5, 2022. https://www.americananthropologist.org/online-content/conversation-welcome
Welcome, Leniqueca. “The Tyranny of the Present.” By Jordan Camp, Conjuncture, June 6, 2022. https://socialjusticeinitiative.domains.trincoll.edu/conjuncture/episode-6-the-tyranny-of-the-present/
Ralph, Laurence. “Episode 8: Injury and Healing on Chicago’s South Side, feat. Laurence Ralph.” By Leniqueca Welcome, Anthropological Airwaves (podcast of American Anthropologist), 2017.
https://soundcloud.com/anthro-airwaves/season-1-episode-8-injury-and-healing-on-chicagos-south-side-feat-laurence-ralph
INVITED TALKS PANELS AND PROFESSIONAL SEMINARS:
2023. “On Blackness and Collage,” Invited research talk hosted by the University of California Caribbean Research Focus Group [virtual], December 4.
2023. “ Criminal Figuration and Collaging Otherwise.” Invited talk at the Images and Justice Series hosted by Peace and Justice Studies, Michigan State University, East Lansing, April 19.
2023. “ On and In Their Bodies: Masculinist Violence, Criminalization and Black Womanhood in Trinidad.” Invited talk hosted by the Society of Fellows, Columbia University, NY, April 13.
2023. “ Keywords in Caribbean Studies: Zwart, Nègre, Negro/a/x*, Black.” Invited panel conversation with Gregory Pierrot, Gloria Wekker, Omaris Z. Zamora and Leniqueca A. Welcome, moderated by Ryan Cecil Jobson and Vanessa Pérez-Rosario. Hosted by Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, virtual, March 2.
2023. “ Come Out of This World: Beyond Terrains of Criminalization to Where Life is Precious.” Invited talk hosted by the Ethnographies of Empire Research Cluster at the School of International Service, American University, D.C., February 24.
2022. “Refiguring Humanism: Toward a Radical Praxis in Contemporary Anthropology.” Invited participant in the Wenner-Gren Seminar 2022, Cape Town, South Africa, December 12-15.
2021. “ ‘You must see it before you shoot it’: Photography and the Making of the Black Criminal Other.” Invited talk at the Race and Technology Series hosted by the Department of Anthropology and the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, D.C., November 15.
2020. “land. body. prison. dream. freedom -SCAPE: A Discussion on Visualizing Urban Violence.” Invited talk at the Penn Urban Studies Graduate Colloquium, University of Pennsylvania, October 8.
2020. “Stolen Daughters: Kidnapped by Boko Haram Post-Screening Discussion.” Invited Panelist, Wolf Humanities Center Forum on Kinship, University of Pennsylvania, March 4.
2019. “Environmental Crisis Events and the Infrastructures of Liberation.” Invited panelist on the States of Infrastructure panel at the States of Crisis: Disaster, Recovery, and Possibility in the Caribbean Small Axe Symposium, Columbia University, New York, May 3-4.
2018. “The Production of Ungreivable Death” Invited panelist at Epidermal Forensics, New York University, New York, October 12.
2017. “Criminal Lives Matter: Anti-black state violence in Trinidad and Tobago” Invited panelist at Feminist Tackling Anti-Black State Violence, The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, November 18.
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS:
2025. “Specters and Speculation: Hauntings and how they teach us about the worlds that we have, the worlds that might have been, and the worlds that must be.” Panel organizer at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting 2025, New Orleans, November 19-23.
2025. “The Idyllic, the Horror and the Worlds in Between: An Interrogation of the Power of Media Making and World-Building.” Paper Presentation at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting 2025, New Orleans, November 19-23.
2024. “20 Years of Modern Blackness: Paradigms, praxis and potentialities” Roundtable organizer and participant at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting 2024, Tampa, Florida, November 20-23.
2024. “REND by Kenneth Reams: A Staged Reading” Moderator for the expert panel discussion following the stage reading at The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design at GW, Washington, D.C., October 19.
2024. “Collage as a Practice of World-Building: Archive, relation” Paper Presentation at Multi-Modal Anthropologies across the Pacific Symposium, Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Tokyo. Japan, January 5.
2024 “We Don’t Have This Problem: Racism, Casteism, and Colorism Around the World” Panel organizer and moderator at the Elliott School of International Affairs Inclusive Excellence week, Washington, D.C., Jan 29-Feb 1.
2023. “Part 2: Fieldwork, Cameras and Workflows: embodied practices-anticipated traces” Roundtable Participant at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting 2023, Toronto, Canada, November 15-19.
2022. “Trust In Law and Order: Criminalization, Sovereignty and the Right to Life and Death in Trinidad.” Paper Presentation at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting 2022, Seattle, Washington, November 9-13.
2022. “Critical Social Fabulations I: Retrospecting Relationality and Decolonizing Designs.” Panel Discussant at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting 2022, Seattle, Washington, November 9-13.
2022. “The Limits of Community Policing in Ending Violence and Providing Justice.” Plenary speaker at the Equity Institute Initiative 2022 Research Showcase, Washington, D.C., September 23.
2022. "What the Sea Knows: Charting a way beyond the criminalization of blackness." Presentation at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting 2022, Februrary25-March 1. [on-line due to COVID-19 pandemic].
2021. “Toward an Experimental Ethics: Experiments with Power and the Ethical Turn(s) in Comparison.” Roundtable at From Ethics to Politics, Society for the Anthropology of Religion Virtual Spring Conference, May 14. [on-line due to COVID-19 pandemic].
2021. “Across Time and Space: Collage as Placing Method.” Presentation at Placing: New Engagements with the ‘Environment,’EnviroLab, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March 18 [on-line due to COVID-19 pandemic].
2020. “Surviving the Legacy of the Plantation: The Making of Criminal Life in Trinidad.” Presentation at the Plantations and their Afterlives: Materialities, Durabilities, Struggles Conference, Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal, September 16-18, 24-25 (moved online due to Covid-19 Pandemic).
2019. “Seeing Some-body: Death Archives and the Production of (Un)grieveable life.” Presentation at the Black Portraiture[s] V: Memory and the Archive Past Present and the Future Conference, New York, New York, October 16-21.
2019. “We Find the Defendant…: Defining Just Management in a State of Crisis.” Presentation at the Caribbean Studies Association 2019 Conference, San Marta, Columbia, June 3-7.
2018. “Viewing bodies: violent feeling to un-feel violence within Trinidad.” Presentation at the Caribbean Studies Association 2018 Conference, Havana, Cuba, June 4-8.
2018. “Emancipating Sovereignty?” Panel co-chair at the Caribbean Studies Association 2018 Conference, Havana, Cuba, June 4-8.
2017. “Selling the Crisis: The logics and emotions of a market for violent imagery.” Presentation at the 116th American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting 2017, Washington D.C., November 29-December 3.
2017. “Performing Development: Post-colonial Statecraft and the Potential of an Otherwise.” Presentation at the Caribbean Studies Association 2017 Conference, Nassau, Bahamas, June 5-10.
2017. “Watching Images: Refusals of black abjection through a re-encounter with images.” Presentation at the 2017 Annual American Ethnological Society Conference, Stanford University, California, March 30-April 1.
2017. “Image Wars: Media as a Space of Violence and Catharsis in Trinidad and Tobago.” Presentation at the Caribbean In/Securities: Creativity and Negotiation in the Caribbean (CARISCC), University of Leeds, England, March 8.
2016. “Constructing State (In) Coherence: Place-Making, Subjectivity and Governance in Trinidad and Tobago.” Presentation at the 115th American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting 2016, Minneapolis, Minnesota, November 16-20.
2013. “Class Identity and Ornamentation in Twentieth-Century Trinidad.” Presentation at the 23rd Annual Arkansas College Art History Symposium, Little Rock, Arkansas, April 2013.
MEDIA PROJECTS/WORKSHOPS/ EXHIBITIONS
2025. Commissioned to design the cover art for the text Exorbitance: A Speculative Ethnography of Inheritance by Deborah A. Thomas.
2025. Displayed an original moving collage short film, The Sun Never Sets, in the Spectral Remix, group art show curated by Craig Campbell and Dominic Boyer, Merchant House Gallery, New Orleans, November 19th- November 22nd.
2024. Displayed four original collage works, Love Sent Across Seas, Group art show curated by Alissa Jordan and Miranda Alexander, Penn Museum, November 8th- November 22nd.
2024. Facilitator, collaging workshop as part of a mini-course on multimodality, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan,
January 4th-14th, 2024.
2023. Facilitator, “Collaging Otherwise,” a collaging workshop at Michigan State University, April 19, 2023.
2021. “-scape,” a virtual installation at the Screening Scholarship Media Festival, University of Pennsylvania, April 17.
2021. Artists-scholar workshop designed and coordinated with Shalon T. Webber- Heffernan, “Borders and Horizons: Performing and Collaging Disposability and Disappearance,” at Intimate Architectures: Displacement, Irruption, and Emergency in the Americas, Graduate Student Initiative (Hemi GSI) Sixth Convergence, Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, University of Chicago. (scheduled for Oct. 2020 but rescheduled to October 2021 [online] due to COVID-19 pandemic).
2019. Documentary Photographer, “Grounds that Shout! (And Others Merely Shaking),” Philadelphia, May 10-11.
2018. Visual methodology talks, Experimental Ethnography Workshops, Shanghai, China, May 16-22.
2017-2018. Curatorial assistant, “Bearing Witness: Four Days in West Kingston”, The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, November 2017- July 2018.
SELECTED AWARDS AND HONORS:
2025. Society of Cultural Anthropology Cultural Horizons Prize for the best article appearing in the previous year of the Cultural Anthropology journal
2025-2026. Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship, Wenner-Gren
2025-2026. Kluge Fellowship, Kluge Center, Library of Congress
2021-2022. Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship [declined]
2021-2022. Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship [declined]
2021-2022. University of Pennsylvania SAS Dissertation Completion Fellowship [declined]
2018. Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant.
2018. SSRC International Dissertation Research Fellowship.
2017. The Graduate and Professional Student Assembly Research Travel Grant, University of Pennsylvania.
2016-2017. The Judith Rodin Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania.
2016, 2017. Latin America and Latino Studies Graduate Student Field Research Grant, University of Pennsylvania.
2016, 2017. Penn Museum Field Funds, University of Pennsylvania.
2016. The Department of Anthropology Summer Field Funds, University of Pennsylvania.
2015-2020. Benjamin Franklin Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania.
2016. AIA Honor Award for Regional and Urban Design, University of Arkansas Community Design Center, “Fayetteville 2030: Food City Scenario,” The American Institute of Architects.
2014. Honorable Mention: 61st Progressive Architecture Award, University of Arkansas Community Design Center, “Fayetteville 2030: Food City Scenario”, Architect.
2013. Mort Karp medal for Societal Awareness in Design, University of Arkansas.
RELEVANT PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
2018- 2022 Consultant, ACLA architecture firm.
2013- 2015 Intern architect, ACLA architecture firm.
