The Department of Anthropology would like to congratulate our newest PhD. Dr. Fayana Richards!

We are very excited to see Fayana come to the completion of her graduate career here at MSU after the successful defense of her dissertation on November 21 and we wish her and her family all the best as she moves forward with her professional career.

Fayana’s research recognizes the role of older African American women in providing care for their own grandchildren, nieces, nephews and even non-kin, crediting historical and structural factors that have shaped observed forms of African American kinship and caregiving patterns. Her dissertation explores African American grandmothers’ motivations for providing care and their associated caregiving practices. In identifying their motivations to care, her research focuses on how relatedness is constituted, as a form of sociality, between grandparents and kin, as well as between non-kin. Questions such as; How are ties of caregiving responsibility created and maintained among grandmothers caring for their grandchildren? How are perceptions of the good life and wellbeing related to transmitting values to their grandchildren? were examined.