Public Scholarship

Public Scholarship as Community led/engaged Work

Public scholarship inspires and nourishes knowledge that lives, interacts, and makes an impact beyond the academy. It is seen in open access publications, social media, blogs, news sites, film and other mediums; in works that address pressing social and political issues and in the living communities from which such knowledge emerges and proliferates. The Center for Religion and Cities supports public scholarship rooted in reciprocal relationships with community organizations.

For Resources on and to learn more about Public Scholarship, see the ACLSs Resources for Publicly Engaged Doctoral Education

Role of Listening in Community led/engaged Work

The Center for Religion and Cities, through the Lifeways of Hope initiative, centers collaborative relationships in the work of research and public scholarship. A key component of this collaborative work is deep listening. Deep listening is a set of practices that support collaborative relationships. These practices create time and space, set aside agendas, welcome the complexity of individual participants, allow for transformation, and interrogate research that is solely focused on collecting data. We will explore forms of listening, how listening is related to data collection and analysis, and ethical challenges to listening.

The 2025 Fellowship

Application Deadline: January 3, 2025

Honorarium: $1,500 

Number of Fellows to be Invited: 4

Time: February 1 - April 30, 2025

Schedule: Fellows will meet weekly on Tuesdays from 5-7pm EST on zoom

The fellowship provides an opportunity for scholars working on community led or engaged work to convene virtually and share experiences and lessons learned with one another alongside CRC leadership.

The 2024 Fellowship

The CRCs 2024 Spring Fellowship brings together public scholars to learn together about the ways that deep listening practices and models shape our approaches to community led/engaged work. Over 6 bi-weekly virtual gatherings, each participant will have an opportunity to share and listen to each others’ experiences of conducting community led/engaged work. By listening to and learning from each others’ difficulties and struggles, celebrations and lessons learned, we hope to collectively nurture and grow reciprocal models for co-creating life-giving public knowledge aimed at improving the quality of life in our communities.

The convenings will be facilitated by Dr. Katherine Kunz and Dr. Harold D. Morales and was co-created by Katherine Kunz, Dom Turner, and the CRCs Lifeways of Hope team.

Participants will additionally be invited to: 

  • Contribute to our living and growing annotated bibliography on public scholarship

  • Attend and Participate in the Toward a Common Public Life Detroit Summit 

  • Contribute to CRC publications and programing on public scholarship

  • Contribute to the Institute for Diversity and Civic Life’s Grounded Knowledge blogs, programs, mapping project, and review of their online training certificate in community engaged research and public humanities initiatives, in partnership with ReligionAndPublicLife.org 

Recipients

Elizabeth Barahona

Elizabeth is a sixth-year doctoral student specializing in Latinx, African American, and United States history at Northwestern University. Her dissertation chronicles how Black and Latinx communities created grassroots coalitions to fight white supremacy in the Deep South, specifically Durham, North Carolina. She was the president of the History Graduate Student Organization, served on the executive board of the Latinx Graduate Student Association, and is a member of the Graduate Workers Union. Elizabeth has taught at the Cook County Jail and teaches low-income adults in Chicago. Elizabeth uses oral histories in her research to prioritize the voices of residents and activists in Durham.

Greta Bennett (she/her)

I am a person who loves life. I enjoy traveling and movies and am a self-professed foodie! What drew me to the fellowship was the emphasis on listening. Being a public theologian, listening is key to assisting communities in identifying common areas of interest that will foster an environment of flourishing for all. Today, there is much noise, and no one is being heard; I want to help quiet the noise so that voices can be heard. This is my first year as a Ph.D. student, so I am still getting my footing as far as managing the workload while trying to have a life! 

Robin Caldwell

Writer, food researcher and fact-checker. Student of Black heritage practices that involve food and community. Creator of Fresh & Fried Hard blog that celebrates the history of Black women in food. Text book contributor who has been cited by Black women scholars. Former adjunct teacher in the areas of mass communication critical studies, urban studies and African American studies. Genetic genealogy enthusiast.

Sam Davis (they/them)

Sam Davis is a Ph.D. candidate at Florida State University under the advisement of Dr. Laura McTighe. They received their MA in Church History from Union Theological Seminary and have returned to NYC for their dissertation project and role as a community archivist at the Metropolitan Community Church of New York. As an interdisciplinary scholar working in the layered threads of LGBTQ+ religious history and community organizing in the Americas, Sam is committed to building different methods for community-driven research and historical inquiry. Their public scholarship explores how collaborative ethnographic methods, oral history, and community archiving can build transformative collective action through deep listening and co-creating community archives and events.

Spencer Williams (he/him)

Spencer is committed to building a more beloved community in the traditions of Martin Luther King and Thich Nhat Hahn. He is currently pursuing a Master of Divinity degree, with a focus on Buddhism and Interreligious Engagement, at Union Theological Seminary (https://utsnyc.edu/life/institutes/buddhism-program/). Trained as an architect and certified planner, he has over 15 years of experience in equitable planning and community development. He has worked in a variety of roles to better understand how different policies and processes shape places and the communities that call them "home." Spencer works to bring new voices into critical conversations around land use, belonging, and imagined futures. Spencer has experience working with public housing authorities, local elected offices, city departments, and community-based advocacy groups. Throughout this year, he is placed at the Fair Housing Justice Center of New York (https://fairhousingjustice.org/). His research and field work is currently focused on articulating a role for movement chaplaincy as a critical aspect and pastoral opportunity during the difficult process between filing complaints of discrimination, subsequent investigations, and the legal process.

Savion Ellis (they/them)

Savion Ellis is a 2nd-year Interdisciplinary Humanities student at the University of California Merced. With a focus on Queer Theory and Environmental Studies, their research highlights the intersectionality between the two through varying genres of theatrical to build discourse on the growing field of Queer Ecology. They are a recipient of the Luce Foundation Fellowship project during the summer of 2023 that was led by Dr. Katie Brokaw, which produced an original work of Eco-Theatre through community-engaged research. They have also worked on the Gateway to Merced Oral History Project, documenting the social memory of the Merced area through a series of oral history interviews.