I collaborated with colleagues from the University of Maryland’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning and the College of Arts and Humanities as part of a novel university-community research partnership model.
Our Urban Equity Collaborative, a new initiative funded by the University of Maryland Grand Challenges program, connects community-based activists with university resources to tackle community-identified challenges of immigrant rights, access to healthy and affordable housing, and urban displacement. In my role as Director of Research and Training for the UEC, I organized workshops on leveraging histories of displacement to achieve equity, addressing the challenges and opportunities small businesses face when new infrastructure projects are built in their neighborhoods and building narrative power for health equity.