Saarah Jappie

Saarah Jappie is a Senior Program Officer in the Intentional Design for an Equitable Academy unit, where she works closely on the Mellon Mays Graduate Programs. From 2019-2025, she served as Program Officer at the Social Science Research Council. At the SSRC, she co-led grants and fellowship programs driving multidisciplinary research initiatives, exploring standards for ethical collaboration, and supporting a new generation of scholars in the United States and internationally. Saarah holds a PhD in History from Princeton University and has published widely on transoceanic histories and the afterlives of slavery and exile in the Indian Ocean world. She previously taught histories of the Global South at the University of the Witwatersrand, and has held research affiliations with the University of Johannesburg’s Visual Identities in Art and Design research center (VIAD) and the Department of Africana Studies at Barnard College.