Dr. Ana Lucia Araujo (Professor in the Department of History, Howard University) is a member of the School of Historical Studies of the prestigious Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey in the academic year 2021-2022. IAS was established in 1930 with twenty-three Members in the School of Mathematics with Albert Einstein as one of its first Professors. Today, IAS’s community of scholars expanded and includes more than 8,000 historians, mathematicians, natural scientists, and social scientists. During her term at IAS in Spring 2022, Professor Araujo will be working on her book The Gift: How Objects of Prestige Shaped the Atlantic Slave Trade and Colonialism (under contract with Cambridge University Press). The book explores how material culture, especially objects of prestige, shaped the exchanges between Africans and Europeans in the era of the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism. Professor Araujo also received a Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society to work on this project.