UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Folayemi Wilson, associate dean for access and equity in the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture, has been awarded a W. E. B. Du Bois Fellowship at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to conduct research for a book project that weaves arboreal research and the history of female lynching victims with Wilson’s own personal and professional life. Structured in the form of a memoir, the book will incorporate previously unknown familial connections to lessons that correlate with the wisdom of trees and American history.
The mission of the W. E. B. Du Bois Center, founded at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2009, is to make the writings of Du Bois, as well as his contemporaries, accessible for application to the problems and issues of the 21st century, and to create new knowledge and support scholarship emanating from his life and teachings. A founding member of the NAACP, Du Bois was one of the foremost Black intellectuals and civil rights activists and a leader in the Pan-African movement. Born in Massachusetts, he died in 1963 in Ghana at age 95.
“I am excited to be awarded this prestigious fellowship at such an opportune time in my research. Du Bois was an exceptional American, global figure, prolific scholar and public intellectual,” said Wilson, who will be in residence at the center this fall. “I am pleased to have the opportunity to mine his activism combatting racial violence and his underappreciated advocacy for environmental justice.”
Wilson’s book, tentatively titled “Regrets to the Earth,” highlights recent scientific research that presents the sentient and collective nature and wisdom of trees. She will investigate whether arboreal research through scientists like Suzanne Simard, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Colin Tudge and most recently African American botanist Beronda Montgomery can answer her central research questions: How does a tree experience a lynching? And can we find evidence of these spectacles as memory in the physiognomy – or outward appearance – of a tree?
“The book and recent research present trees as allies in liberation and forest intelligence in cooperation with Black freedom and well-being, consistent with Du Bois’s ideals,” Wilson said.
B. Stephen Carpenter II, the Michael J. and Aimee Ruskinko Kakos Dean in the College of Arts and Architecture, said Wilson’s fellowship will support a thought-provoking book project that brings together her family history, arboreal research and professional practice as an artist and designer.
“I am thrilled Associate Dean Wilson received this fellowship, which will allow her to focus on a book project that combines her research and creative practice to examine personal and cultural histories within the art and design world and in academia,” Carpenter said. “Her book aligns with the goals of the W. E. B. Du Bois Center and I am proud she is contributing to scholarship related to one of the most significant public intellectuals and civil rights activists in U.S. history.”
Wilson’s research team includes Chicago artist and researcher Ebere Agwuncha and horticulturist, geneticist and pathologist Crystal Huff, a Penn State alum who was instrumental in the creation of the Children’s Garden at Hershey Gardens.
Wilson’s work is also supported by the Black Genius Foundation through a 2026 Stroke of Genius Fellowship.