© photo by Jeff Day

Melissa Lefkowitz

Doctoral Student Fellow

Doctoral Student, Department of Anthropology, GSAS
Cultivating Youth Along the Belt and Road: An Ethnography of Chinese Development-Themed Programming in Nairobi, Kenya

Melissa Lefkowitz is a filmmaker and PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology and Certificate Program in Culture and Media at New York University. Her research interests include social imaginaries, transnational mobilities, cosmopolitan knowledges, media worlds, and the “Africa-China relationship” writ large. Her dissertation, tentatively titled​ ‘Cultivating Youth Along the Belt and Road: An Ethnography of Development-Themed Programming in Nairobi, Kenya,’ examines shifting social imaginaries and consequences of the Africa-China relationship in Chinese and Kenyan contexts through a focus on educational and volunteer tourism programs in Nairobi, Kenya.