Sixth-year graduate student Wei Gan has been awarded the Dean’s Completion Fellowship for the Fall 2023 semester. The Graduate School awards this fellowship to promising graduate students in the Humanities and Social Sciences who will be defending their dissertation in the coming academic year. Following her dissertation defense, Wei will be appointed as a Postgraduate Research Associate (PGRA) through the Office of the Dean of the Faculty for Spring 2024.

Wei’s dissertation research explores the universe of what she calls philanthroactivism, which she conceptualizes as a complex, dynamical system by which the disbursement of resources through philanthropy is constitutive of efforts to promote social change and sometimes coterminous with them. More specifically, her work investigates the ways in which Asian American philanthroactivism seeks to achieve racial and social justice via the redistribution of capital. As a unique lens into the entanglement of capital and justice work, Wei’s study provides insight into the infrastructures and mechanisms that catalyze and sustain social movements more generally and addresses larger questions about race, capital, and citizenship.

For information about the Dean's Completion Fellowship / PGRA program, click here.