Population Studies and Training Center

David Curtiss is a doctoral student in Sociology attending Brown University, with affiliations in the Watson School of International and Public Affairs and the Population Studies and Training Center. His research explores the growing emergence of Black American emigration and relocation to Africa, examining how diasporic return shapes space, power, and African state-building. 

In his current project, David investigates the linkages between identity, belonging, and political economy for Black Americans who resettle in Ghana as historical diasporans, with a special focus on exploring the various ways these movements are mediated by co-ethnic brokers who translate desires for return into pathways of settlement and incorporation. Ultimately, he endeavors to trace these processes in ways that inform both scholarly and policy understandings of the relations between contemporary migration, race and ethnicity, and diaspora-state relations.