Incoming Development Studies PhD Student Donari Yahzid is among the 95 outstanding scholars receiving a 2025 Gates scholarship. This scholarship will cover the full cost of Donari's studies, including university fees and maintenance. The Centre of Development Studies extends its heartiest congratulations to Donari for her outstanding achievement and wishes her the best of luck with her PhD studies. Please find Donari's statement below.
"As a PhD student at the Centre of Development Studies, I will be researching Afro-Indigenous land rights in Brazil and the ways that these communities challenge state and development agencies to reclaim forms of sovereignty. This research stems from my personal love of land rights movements, having grown up in a Rastafarian/Jamaican household, but has evolved with my introduction to new countries. In 2019, I was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to conduct research on Samoan customary land tenure after writing a senior honours thesis on the threats that development agencies posed to Samoan land rights. After completing my Fulbright, I did my MPhil in Development Studies at the University of Cambridge learning about the nuanced relationship between land rights and development. During my MPhil, I also worked as a researcher at the Institute of Race Relations where I examined struggles for land, self-governance and culture in the UK. After graduating from Cambridge with distinction, I worked with Right to the City in the US to research the rise of the far-right and their impact on land rights for Indigenous and marginalized communities. My continued interest in land rights movements inspired my move to São Paulo, Brazil where I currently reside, research and engage with Indigenous and Quilombo communities fighting to obtain their land. Now that I am returning to the Centre, I am excited to do so as a Gates Scholar and to delve even further into the relationship between land and development." - Donari Yahzid
Read Donari's Scholar-elect profile here: https://www.gatescambridge.org/biography/19378/