Those who visit the library often have likely already seen a new contributor to the library’s adult programming team: public humanities fellow Sue Iseyen. Sue joined the library as a GradFUTURES Social Impact Fellow last fall, and she has continued with this opportunity through the spring semester of 2025. Social Impact Fellows such as Sue apply discipline-specific skills, gain interdisciplinary project team experience, and receive one-on-one mentoring, all while contributing to the social impact mission of organizations like the Princeton Public Library.
And the benefits go both ways. Over the course of six months, Sue has proven herself a reliable and thoughtful contributor to the library’s service effort on behalf of the community, even as she has benefited as a student by learning from the planning and coordination of the library’s busy programming calendar.
How long have you studied at Princeton University? What do you research there and what contribution does your dissertation make to your field of study?
I started graduate studies at Princeton University in the fall of 2020 and have had the privilege of studying there for about four and a half years. I am pursuing my Ph.D. in History, and my research focuses on the intersections of law, politics, public health and medicine in the management of skin diseases in colonial Nigeria and the Gold Coast. More specifically, my dissertation explores the intricate dynamics of leprosy control and the social, medical and political pivots upon which the fate of people affected by the disease twisted and turned from the later decades of the nineteenth up to the mid-twentieth centuries. In different parts of Africa, particularly in the early twentieth century, leprosy control policies consistently perpetuated stigma and social exclusion against those diagnosed with the disease and these policies were not only rooted in racial, societal and religious beliefs, but were often integrated into the social fabric of local communities. While these leitmotifs have remained central in the historiography and are crucial elements in my narrative—especially since the disease has continued to be associated with something, anything at all that is worse than the plague—I am more interested in a comparative study of the individual African experience across spaces. My academic research is in part a social history of how leprosy sufferers in colonial West Africa became recognized as sources of danger to public health. The other part of the story bears witness to the limits of state and medical policies, and more importantly, the ways that colonial subjects navigated these systems of control.
What led you to pursue the public humanities fellowship offered through the partnership between the library and Princeton University’s GradFUTURES?
Historians hold one of their deepest purposes in not merely linking the past with the present, but also in connecting their research with social issues in public contexts, in order to inform actionable policy decisions by government in society. The latter influence has been one of my strongest motivations for pursuing the public humanities fellowship, a joint initiative of Princeton University’s GradFUTURES and the Princeton Public Library. As someone who has always wanted to activate their research outside of disciplinary-bound methods, I have since sought useful and practical ways to convey and connect my convoluted research to a non-specialist audience within local communities. Research and writing skills, critical thinking and analysis are all raw materials that one acquires and develops over time during graduate studies at an academic institution like Princeton University, but its practicalities involve exploring experiential approaches to public-facing scholarship and pedagogy.
What have you learned through your experience at the library so far? Are there any projects which you are especially excited to be pursuing right now?
Experiential learning at the Princeton Public Library has provided me with the resources necessary for exploring the potential of public oriented resources and scholarship. I have since partnered with the very remarkable programming team at the library on a variety of events, including several author talks and the Princeton Children’s Book Festival as well as major calendrical commemorations and celebrations like the Festival Cultural Latino and Hispanic Heritage Month.
I am most excited about collaborating with the ANEW Artists’ Alliance, a group of self-taught visual artists based in Trenton. In the past couple of weeks, I and the library’s public humanities specialist, Cliff Robinson, who has mentored me since the start of the fellowship, have been hands-on with the planning of an art exhibition. Above all, I have been responsible for collecting oral history from these talented men and women, whose lives and careers remain a strong testament to their creativity and community. Community engagement and participatory research are pivotal to most scholarly training, and my experience at the library continues to present me with practical and interactive approaches to explore and various forms of public engagement to master.
Sue will continue with her studies in collaboration with the library at least through the end of the spring semester. Due to the quality of her contributions the library has already seen how this partnership with GradFUTURES can bring benefits to the library and the community alike, so we are excited to continue building this relationship and to discover where it may lead.
Photo credit: courtesy of Sue Iseyen.