Penn-Mellon Just Futures Initiative - Tracking Dispossessions in the Americas

The “Dispossessions in the Americas” (DiA) Research Team at the University of Pennsylvania is an interdisciplinary collaboration, funded by the Mellon Foundation, involving the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program, the Department of Africana Studies, the Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Program, the Penn Cultural Heritage Center, and the Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics Department. Our co-Principal Investigators work within the fields of political science, anthropology, history, art history, epidemiology, and public health. Our primary goals are (1) to document territorial, embodied, and cultural dispossessions in the Americas from 1491 to the present day, and (2) to identify models of reparation or repossession and restoration of land, health, and cultural heritage.