Taubman College The Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) awarded nearly $450,000 in grants across seven research teams to investigate the effects of systemic racism and inform strategies to combat them. Two teams include members from Taubman College.
Sankofa Community Research
Team leads: Stephen Ward, Rita Chin and Earl Lewis (LSA), Emily Kutil (A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning) and David Goldberg (Wayne State University) partnered with Black Bottom Archives
Goal: By bringing together oral histories, census records, business records, historic maps and other sources, this community-led project will study the multigenerational impact of displacement on Detroit’s Black Bottom community, focusing on the perspectives of Black Bottom survivors and Black Detroiters.
Community-Centered Inquiry Into Racially Restrictive Covenants in Washtenaw County
Team leads: Justin Schell (U-M Library), Robert Goodspeed (A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning), Michael Steinberg (Law School), Yodit Mesfin Johnson and Jessica Letaw (FutureRoot)
Goal: This project will utilize computational methods and community-based research to identify and map property records that include historical racial covenants in Washtenaw County, to better understand how these covenants contributed to structural racism and should inform actions today.
Geoffrey Thün, professor of architecture and associate vice president for research – social sciences, humanities and the arts, oversees the grant program. He said, “The latest round of RCIP anti-racism grants allows U-M researchers to collaborate on projects that bring attention to some of the communities most affected by racial inequalities throughout our society.”
More information and a list of all awarded projects is available in the announcement by the National Center for Institutional Diversity.
