The Center for Global Studies (CGS) congratulates CGS Faculty Affiliates Faranak Miraftab, Ken Salo, Scott Althaus, Anita Chan, Yannick Kluch, Teresa Ann Barnes, James Kilgore, Ian Brooks and former CGS Graduate Assistant Atyeh Ashtari for receiving the 2024-2025 Chancellor Jones Call to Action Research Program awards. The Chancellor’s Call to Action to Address Racism & Social Justice Research Program 2024-2025 awarded 12 research programs focused on systemic racial inequalities and injustice in our communities and higher education. The $2 million grant will fund academic research and community-based knowledge focused on advancing knowledge and addressing systemic racism and racial disparity in the following research areas spanning domestic, international, and transnational spaces:
- Systemic interventions to improve educational outcomes and increase college readiness.
- Research that tackles the complex drivers of health disparities.
- The interrogation of systems of disparity, discrimination, and disenfranchisement.
- Transnational justice (i.e., achieving justice in issues that bridge local, national, and global communities).
- Systemic bias as it affects LGBTQIA+ people and communities.
Funding for awarded projects ranged from $100,000 to $68,210. Among funding recipients, Anita Chan and co-project leaders received $100,000 for the research program “Activating a Peer-to-Peer Train the Trainers Network for Digital Equity Network in East Central Illinois: Advancing Racial Justice in Non-Profit Digital Navigation Programs.” The program seeks to address persistent issues of Broadband and Digital Inequity in East Central Illinois (EC-IL), particularly affecting historically marginalized and infrastructurally underserved populations.
Faranak Miraftab, Ken Salo, Teresa Ann Barnes, James Kilgore, and Atyeh Ashtari along with other faculty of the University, also received $99,560 funding for the research program “Co-creating Knowledge for Antiracist and Transnational Solidarities through Radical Practices of Care, Hope, and Humane Urbanisms.” This project will co-create non-hierarchical learning spaces for their long-time collaborators, working across campus-community and social-spatial divides, to share social justice pedagogies and digital media methods as pathways for realizing antiracist, transnational solidarities they wish to forge across global color lines.
Scott Althaus’ research program, “Enhancing SPOTLITE to Improve Police Accountability in All U.S. Communities” received funding totaling $100,000 builds on the work of Cline Center researchers on the initial version of SPOTLITE United States—the most authoritative and comprehensive registry of police uses of lethal force across the United States—this project will enhance national data for 2022 and 2023 by adding fields that identify the agency or agencies involved, the exact time and location of the event, and whether the incident included death or injury.
Yannick Kluch's project “Inclusive Champions for Change through Sport (IC-ChangeS): Developing a Social Justice Curriculum for High School Athletes in Champaign County” received $90,338 in funding. By partnering with Athlete Ally, a national nonprofit focused on promoting inclusion in and through sport, the proposed IC-ChangeS program aims to provide a crucial learning opportunity to strengthen high school athletes’ leadership skills, specifically focusing on social justice leadership.
Ian Brooks and other co-project leaders of the project “Development of SPICE-Healthcare: Supporting Personalized and Inclusive Cuisines in Environments for Healthcare” received $68,210 in funding. This project seeks to build the foundation for a web-based platform to Support Personalized and Inclusive Cuisines in Environments for Healthcare (SPICE-Healthcare). SPICE-Healthcare will enable clinicians to conduct and provide culturally and medically tailored nutrition assessments and care plans to diverse older adults.
CGS is proud to be affiliated with faculty addressing racism and social injustice through research.
