Camille Acosta Awarded Annual Phi Beta Kappa Fellowship

Camille Acosta, PhD candidate at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, has been named the recipient of the 2021 Mary Isabel Sibley Fellowship, which is awarded yearly by the Phi Beta Kappa Society. With the fellowship, Acosta will receive a stipend of $20,000 that she plans to use to complete her dissertation research.

Her project, “Death and Migration in Classical Athens,” focuses on the burial practices of migrants in the Greek world from 500–300 BCE and aims to gather information on all known migrant graves in Classical Athens using archaeological data to reconstruct the actions and rituals that took place at the funeral. Acosta’s goal is to enhance the existing body of scholarly work on this subject by creating a comprehensive record of migrant burials and cemeteries in Classical Athens. Based at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, she will analyze archaeological and historical materials to explore the circumstances of migrant burial and compare local and foreign traditions.

The Mary Isabel Sibley Fellowship was established in 1934 by Isabelle Stone in honor of her mother to recognize exceptional scholars in the field of French or Greek language, literature, and culture. Acosta earned her master’s degree in Classical archaeology from the University of Oxford. Her past recognitions include UCLA Graduate Research Mentorship and the Cota-Robles Fellowship.

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