Current Research Projects
Prospecting Return: The Gift of Genetic Reconnection in Cameroon
Prospecting Return examines the rise of genetic reconnection programs in Cameroon 50 years after independence. Based on the ways that the genetic diaspora’s return was described as a “gift” to the nation, Massie examines how sharing ancestry reflects a process where African Americans pursuit of the past is entangled with Cameroonians aspirations to create new prospects for a postcolonial future.
This research has been made possible through generous support from: the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation, the UC Center for New Racial Studies, the UC Berkeley Center for African Studies, and the UC Center for Race & Gender.
Related Publications:
Massie, Victoria M. 2022. “Spillers’s Baby, Anthropology’s Maybe: A Postgenomic Reckoning.” Feminist Anthropology 3 (1): 137–50.
https://doi.org/10.1002/fea2.12075
Stressful Crossings: How Black Immigrants’ Health is (Im)mobilized in Houston
In collaboration with Dr. Amarilys Estrella, I am currently working on an illness narrative project that seeks to examine statelessness broadly as a chronic problem contributing to the health inequalities facing Black migrant communities in Houston, and Texas more broadly. Initial funding for this project has been funded by a three year Building Research on Inequality and Diversity to Grow Equity (BRIDGE) grant at Rice.
Weathered Legacies: A Memoir of Racialized Chronic Stress
Inspired by the sudden death of her mother, Massie’s second book project, Weathered Legacies, examines epigenetic models of racialized stress according to generational differences in life expectancy through a family genealogy of race, mobility and health of her family roots in North Carolina since slavery.