The award was presented to the Romance Studies scholar at the African Literature Association's annual meeting in Knoxville, Tennessee, on May 27, 2023. Julia Borst received the award for her article “Imagining Afrodescendance and the African Diaspora in Spain: Re-/De-Centering Belonging in Literature, Photography, and Film” (vol. 52,no. 2, 2021). It was published in the “Research in African Literatures” journal.

The article, in which Dr. Julia Borst summarizes key findings of her ongoing DFG project, addresses the question of how Afrodescendence and Africa are imagined in poetry, photography, and film as empowering points of reference for the Afro-diasporic subject in Spain. The Abioseh Porter Best Essay Award is presented annually for outstanding articles in the field of African literary studies that have been published in major peer-reviewed academic journals. The committee that decided on the allocation of the award highlighted in particular Borst’s merits in bringing visibility to a marginalized research subject and in furthering a global debate on the African diaspora by placing it within the Spanish context.