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PROJECTS
PROJECTS
Developing & Displacing the 21st Century City: Mapping the Spatial Strategies & Impacts of Global Retail Investment in East Africa
This project posits that global retail capital is a primary driver of contemporary urban development and displacement. It aims to understand how and why retail capital is transforming cities of the early 21st century, the form that transformation is taking on city residents and workers, and to assess effective strategies developed to build more sustainable, safe, and secure urban futures. Kampala, Uganda, part of a rapidly urbanizing retail capital hub, is a remarkably insightful indicator of these shifts toward global retail capital and their impacts. If we are to foster safe, sustainable and humane urban life in this century, we must understand the geographic, political-economic, ecological and socio-cultural mechanisms of contemporary urban development and displacement, especially in cities of the global south experiencing its sharpest edges. We must also understand its key contemporary driver: global retail capital. Students will engage in preliminary mapping, news report collection, survey and interview tool development.
Geographies of Displacement: Mexican Migrant/Refugee Children and Youth in the Sonora-Arizona Borderlands
This project proposed the creation of a much-needed mixed methods binational research program in the Sonora-Arizona borderlands, as Mexico holds the third highest number of internally displaced people in Latin America, examining, in-depth, the magnitude, patterns, networks, processes, and experiences of displaced Mexican children/youth and the interrelationships between their internal forced movement and international migration. The project will fortify existing collaborations to establish new binational partnerships with domestic and international NGOs, government entities, advocates, scholars, and universities through creation of a Displaced Mexican Children/Youth Working Group, develop innovative applications of GIS and story mapping design and prepare for a larger scale, long-term project of research, education and, notably, outreach. Students will assist in the project by making courtroom observations and transcribing and analyzing data.
Searching in Aluminum’s Shadows: Black Geographies & Industrial Toxicity
In Badin, North Carolina, a segregated aluminum company town, anti-Black racism and toxic wastes converge to shape the everyday lives and politics of Black residents. This project examines how residents experience, interpret and negotiate living with racialized toxicity, and what these experiences teach us about racial capitalism. This project seeks to redress the erasure of Black experience from histories of aluminum production, a form of activist scholarship that engages critical theoretical work in conversation with community organizing. The project includes a research play, “Race and Waste in an Aluminum Town,” which draws on interview excerpts, observation of community meetings, and archival materials to validate residents’ lived experiences of racialized toxicity and share these insights with broader publics.
ConTex Grant
The project focused on internally displaced Mexican children/youth and families who seek international protections on the US border. Utilizing mixed methods binational research program in the Sonora-Arizona borderlands examining, in-depth, the magnitude, patterns, networks, processes, and experiences of displaced Mexican children/youth, and the interrelationships between their internal forced movement and international migration. Our responsibilities included transcribing interviews from people with experience in this narrative, correcting the border apprehensions data, and locating articles/news detailing of internal displacements. The project will also develop innovative applications of GIS and story mapping with focus on children/adolescents. The goal is to raise awareness and critical responses of binational relations and policies regarding internal migration - especially for Mexican children/asylum seekers.
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