News & Events
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The Psychological and Social Benefits of Agriculture with the Homeless Garden Project
Trevin Dace, a 2022 UCSC Sociology BA graduate, began his involvement with HGP by volunteering, which led to a summer internship. Inspired by his involvement, he wrote his senior thesis in collaboration with the Homeless Garden Project Farm from May 2021 to May 2022. His goal was to understand the physiological and social benefits of…
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Playworks
Associate Professor of Sociology Rebecca London has been working with Playworks since 2008. Their work involves helping schools to improve playtime through strategies to make recess safe, healthy, and engaging, and to provide students with tools to manage their own play, solve conflicts that arise, and strengthen their social and emotional skills. To read more,…
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Decolonize the Surf
David Crellin created Decolonize the Surf for his Master of Fine Arts thesis in Digital Arts New Media. The project was created to present research about the history of representation and racism in surf culture and to encourage meaningful conversation in the surfing community around these issues. A site-specific art and research project, Decolonize The Surf deployed…
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Research for, by, and about the People
Rebecca London writes on her experience and expertise with community-engaged research, arguing that rather than sequester community-engaged research to the sidelines of academia, sociology should elevate it as a rigorous, theoretically rich, and ethical way to conduct research and advance social justice. Read Research for, by, and about the People online via the American Sociological…
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Critical Engagement: Deepening Partnerships for Justice
Resurgent “culture wars” and American partisan politics have once again put higher education on the hot seat, and universities find themselves on the defensive, fending off charges of elitism, liberal bias, and irrelevance. Community-engaged research (CER) has become increasingly common on today’s campuses as part of this counter-campaign. Steve McKay outlines attempts at the UCSC…
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Community-Engaged Research (CER) in Contentious Times: Some Reflections
As demonstrated by this special issue of Footnotes, there is a growing and welcome recognition in sociology and allied disciplines of the value of community-engaged research (CER) and of its potentially transformative benefits for community partners, students, universities, and scholarship in the field. This has long been my experience with CER, most recently with the approach…
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Invisible Labor on California’s Central Coast
Ghostly Labor: A Dance Film explores the history of labor in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands through tap dance, Mexican Zapateado, Son Jarocho, Afro-Caribbean movement, and live music. The film is the culmination of a years-long collaboration between Professor of Film and Digital Media John Jota Leaños, San Francisco-based dance company La Mezcla, and non-profit Ayudando Latinos a Soñar. To…
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Salinas Inclusive Economic Development Initiative
Since the fall of 2021, Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies Chris Benner has been working with the Salinas Inclusive Economic Development Initiative (SIEDI). Together with Institute for Social Transformation staff and Everett Program students, they support a cohort of nine community-based organizations as they work to build a more inclusive and equitable economy for the families and communities…
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Thinking Globally about Okinawa
The Okinawa Memories Initiative, a collaboration between Associate Professor of History Alan Christy and the Okinawan Association of America (OAA), aims to rethink the history of postwar Okinawa by focusing attention on the Okinawan diaspora. To read more, download the full Thinking Globally Campus + Community Spotlight.
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Your Future is Our Business
Assistant Professor of Computational Media David Lee leads the Tech4Good Lab, directing research on scaling experiential education and supporting community collaboration at the intersection of computing and society. With undergraduates in his spring 2022 course, he partnered with Your Future is our Business to create several projects aimed at supporting their mission of improving middle and high school…
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We Belong Too
Professor of Psychology Regina Langhout and Associate Professor Steve McKay worked with the United Way’s Youth Action Network (YAN) to pilot an engaged research project titled We Belong Too. Combining youth participatory action research with undergraduate student experiential learning, the project explores what local youth find compelling to study and what they are looking for from their adult allies. To read more, download…
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Making an Exonoree
In fall 2021, Sharon Daniel, Professor of Film and Digital Media launched a two-quarter course titled “Reasonable Doubts: Making an Exoneree” co-taught with Georgetown professors Marc Howard and Marty Tankleff. The course reinvestigated questionable cases, produced short documentaries that made the case for wrongful conviction, and created social media campaigns calling for exoneration. To read more, download…