Professor of communications in the College of Arts and Sciences', A.Q. Miller School of Media and Communication, Kansas State, Dr. Nancy Muturi, has been awarded a fellowship by the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program to collaborate with Daystar University's School of Communication. She arrives in mid-April for a period of three months.

While at Daystar, the Carnegie Fellow will mentor graduate students who are writing their Master's theses and doctoral dissertations. She will also coordinate research seminars for faculty and graduate students, enabling them to share their projects and get feedback.

Born, raised and educated in Kenya, the Carnegie Scholar has research interest in Kenya’s health and risk communication around such topics as HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases, excessive alcohol consumption and its impact on reproductive health, HPV vaccination, climate change and COVID-19.

Further, Dr. Muturi and her host, Dr. Evonne Mwangale, a lecturer at Daystar University will facilitate a workshop on health communication in the African context, aimed at bringing together scholars and practitioners from other institutions and local organizations to discuss ongoing projects in the country. They hope to feature some of the projects in a proposed health communication case studies book.

"It is an honor to be invited by Daystar University, one of the top media and communications universities in the country," said Dr. Muturi, adding that it is a great opportunity for her to collaborate with colleagues in African institutions, and fulfilling to share her African-based research where it matters most and know that she is making a difference.

The Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program is designed to strengthen capacity at the host institution and develop long-term, mutually beneficial collaborations between universities in Africa and the United States and Canada. Host universities are matched with African-born scholars for project visits between 14 and 90 days.

The program is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and managed by the Institute of International Education in collaboration with the Association of African Universities.

So far, nearly 600 fellowships have been awarded since the program's inception in 2013.