Congratulations to Our Spring Scholarship and Fellowship Awardees!
The Human Rights Program is thrilled to announce the amazing students who are recipients of our Spring 2026 scholarships and fellowships! Read on to learn more about our spring awardees.
Fraser Fellows to Gain Experience at Human Rights Organizations
Named after Donald and Arvonne Fraser, two groundbreaking leaders in the defense of international human rights and women’s rights, the Don and Arvonne Fraser Fellowships support students interning at leading human rights organizations over the summer.
This summer, as the Don Fraser Fellow, Sanket Deshpande will intern with The Advocates for Human Rights. Deshpande is a junior in the College of Liberal Arts (CLA) majoring in economics and political science. Deshpande is also a Hrant Dink Fellow for 2025-2026, translating human rights research into accessible guides.
As the Arvonne Fraser Fellow, Katrina Jensen will intern this summer with Gender Justice. Jensen is a junior in CLA majoring in psychology and political science. Jensen will bring her passion for policy and rights-based institutions and her experience leading workshops on sexual violence prevention and wellbeing to this opportunity.
We look forward to following our Fraser Fellows on their journeys this summer!
Grimes Fellow Engages with Community and Environmental Justice
The Sharon Grimes Human Rights Fellowship, funded by a generous gift from Sharon Grimes, recognizes a Master of Human Rights student who demonstrates a commitment to human rights and the environment. This year’s recipient, Syeda Farhana Haque, has shown her passion and dedication to the intersection of human rights and environmental justice through her work with communities whose access to rights has been influenced by displacement, poverty, and environmental conditions.
She has explored questions of environmental justice and public health inequality through her coursework in the Master of Human Rights program.
Recognizing Undergraduate Contributions to Human Rights
Each year, the Human Rights Program recognizes a graduating undergraduate student who has demonstrated a commitment to human rights through work on a human rights cause, service to others, raising awareness of a human rights issue, and/or promoting human rights programming and community-building on campus, with the Outstanding Service to Human Rights Award.
This year’s Outstanding Service to Human Rights Award goes to Ava Roots. A sociology and history major in CLA, Roots has used her voice, bravery, and skills to advocate for policy change and work on issues including Minnesota prisons, school disciplinary policy, and immigrant rights. She has been a leader in translating classroom learning into action.
The Human Rights Program is pleased to announce the expansion of its undergraduate awards to include three new awards that celebrate the diversity of ways that our students promote human rights.
The Human Rights Program Visionary Award recognizes a student who has shown visionary leadership and fostered programmatic innovation within the Human Rights Program that expands student engagement, human rights learning, or community and institutional strength.
Libby Nemitz, a CLA student with majors in global studies and Asian & Middle Eastern studies who is currently in Taiwan with the Chinese Flagship Program, is an alum of our Human Rights Program student staff. Libby was instrumental in developing HRP’s student-led human rights blog, Human Writes, including building the website from the ground up, establishing processes, and serving as the blog’s inaugural student editor.
The Human Rights Program Changemaker Award recognizes an undergraduate that demonstrates creative collaborative action to advance social justice and equip others to claim and advocate for their rights at the University of Minnesota and beyond. This year’s award winner, Riley Stern, is a CLA student with majors in economics and mathematics with minors in public health and population studies.
Riley was a leader in developing the Human Rights Program’s new Rights ColLaboratory and served as its senior researcher. The Rights ColLab is an interdisciplinary, collaborative, experiential learning laboratory that equips the next generation of researchers and practitioners with the research and advocacy skills needed to tackle 21st century human rights challenges.
The Human Rights Program Upstander Award recognizes an undergraduate student who has challenged injustice, demonstrated moral courage, and/or taken action to defend the rights of others or the right to defend human rights within our community. Dante Rocío, a CLA student pursuing an individualized degree in linguistics, philosophy, and global studies, has advocated for the rights of immigrants, international students, and the LGBTQIA+ community on campus and beyond. Dante has contributed his skills towards creating more inclusive policies, support systems and representation for our LGBTQIA+ and immigrant students, as well as making the Twin Cities more accessible linguistically to our immigrant communities as a multilingual humanitarian translator.
Scribe for Human Rights Explores the Rights of Incarcerated People
Each year, HRP and the Department of English award a Master of Fine Arts student the Scribe for Human Rights Fellowship to serve as a writer-in-residence on a human rights topic. The joint fellowship supports creative writing, storytelling, and human rights advocacy.
This year’s awardee, Zeke Caligiuri, is a second year fiction and creative writing student doing prison justice work. Zeke uses his writing to empower human beings who are currently or formerly incarcerated.
This summer, Zeke is working on two projects: 1) his first novel - a collection of stories centered around the Minnesota Correctional facility in Stillwater, MN; and 2) an archival project that collects personal stories from members of “Minnesota’s Mass Incarceration Generation” (1993-2022). Zeke’s work illustrates the way that incarcerated persons have organized in ways that uplift and support each other’s creative, intellectual, and professional interests despite living in a system of diminishing agency for cultural creation.
HRP and the Department of English were also thrilled to award the Scribe for Human Rights Runner-Up Fellowship to Hannah Cook, a second year Master of Fine Arts in creative writing student. Hannah will be working on a collection of poetry that explores Chicana women’s experiences with intimate partner violence. Her work will add to the creative and scholarly collection of work on the impact of psychological abuse, and the disproportionate impact of various forms of intimate partner violence on Chicana women.
OHCHR Fellows to Intern with the UN in Geneva
Each year, the Master of Human Rights program sends one or two exceptional students to Geneva to complete a summer internship with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). This summer, Alexandra Singer and Twisha Trivedi will be joining the Civic Space Unit in Geneva. They will be working at the heart of the UN’s efforts to protect and expand civic space—the environment that allows people to speak out, organize, and participate in their societies without fear. Alexandra and Twisha will be supporting global initiatives to protect human rights defenders, monitoring threats to activism, and helping to ensure that the voices of civil society remain a central part of the UN's mission worldwide. We are proud to have Alexandra and Twisha representing the University of Minnesota on the global stage!
