2025 Faculty Fellows
Recipients of the Institute for Social Transformation’s Catalyze Grants and Emerging Scholar Grants. Learn more about each project and fellow below.
Seed Grant Recipients $500-$3,000
Michelle Aguilera, Assistant Professor, Education
“Cultivating Fruitful Collaborations: Partnerships with Dual Language Educators in Santa Cruz County“
This project aims to understand the experience of dual language educators in a local elementary school as they develop a new dual language curriculum. This project will build an important research partnership between the UCSC Education Department and local elementary educators in Santa Cruz County. In the first phase of the study, a series of Pláticas (workshops) will be developed that centers teachers’ knowledge and interests as they share their experience in the dual language classroom. The important insights yielded will help in understanding the unique factors that shape dual language programs in California and in this county specifically. Working collectively and collaboratively with local dual language educators, the aim is to build towards a dual language program and curriculum that serves all students.
Lora Bartlett, Associate Professor, Education
“Transforming Crisis Response in Schools and School Systems“
Schools face repeated and growing crises in the delivery of public education, ranging from pandemics and natural disasters to gun violence, fiscal crises, racial reckonings, and threats to free speech & the democratic process; yet insights from crisis theory & related empirical research have not been widely applied to the study of schooling. This project will bridge that gap, help improve schools’ emergency responses, and address implications for the teacher workforce by bringing together scholars of crisis theory and emergency response with scholars of teachers’ work, organization, and education policy to collaboratively advance understanding of teachers’ work in times of crisis and seed an interdisciplinary school crisis research agenda.
Zoe Zhao, Assistant Professor, Sociology
“Digital Survival: Chinese-speaking Immigrants in U.S. Platform Economies“
Our working group examines the digital platform ecologies and survival strategies of Chinese-speaking immigrant workers in the U.S., amidst the surge in Chinese asylum migration since 2021. Through interviews and ethnography, we analyze how these workers navigate and reshape platform-based labor markets while building mutual aid networks. Our group challenges elitist and high-tech stereotypes of East Asian immigrants, providing scholarly and policy insights into platform economies and undocumented migration, emphasizing their resilience and organizing potential in a hostile socio-political climate. We also aim to expand into a comparative research network exploring undocumented and refugee workers from non-Spanish speaking communities.
Sprout Grant Recipients $2,500 to $18,500
Rekia Jibrin, Assistant Professor, Education
“School Police Abolition: Reconceptualizing School Safety in the Wake of George Floyd“
In June 2020, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) in California passed the “George Floyd Resolution to Eliminate School Police” (Resolution No. 1920-0260) (GFR), which abolished OUSD’s school police department. Scholars and practitioners are at the helm of a critical moment to illuminate what happens to these racial inequalities when district policy makers do act to diminish police presence in schools. To meet this need, I will collect data using focus groups and interviews with OUSD students who are part of the GFR design team to understand how Black and Latinx high school students are experiencing discipline and feelings of safety in the wake of the GFR.
Flora Lu, Professor, Environmental Studies
“Unearthing Legacies: Black History Research and Preservation Initiative“
This project develops a partnership between UCSC and the London Nelson Legacy Initiative (LNLI) to research and share the stories of Black pioneers in pre-1900s Santa Cruz County, working to identify, restore, and preserve historical burial sites as a sacred act of cultural care and place-keeping. LNLI and UCSC will form a multidisciplinary team to conduct archival research, oral history collection, and community engagement to foster a deeper understanding of Black pioneers’ contributions to the region’s cultural and social fabric. IST funding will SPROUT a grant proposal to the Mellon Foundation, whose priorities include preserving cultural landmarks, such as cemeteries, as spaces of memory and enduring significance.
Maywa Montenegro, Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies
“Mapping the Visions, Politics & Practices of Agroecological Technologies“
Agroecology is often perceived as antithetical to technology, due to historical frictions with technology-centered industrial agriculture. Yet, agroecologists have their own technological visions and futures. They have creative ways of bootstrapping, repurposing, and reimagining how dominant sociotechnical systems can work in new ways. This project maps the politics, practices, and narratives of emancipatory technologies for agroecology, using the UN High Level Panel of Experts 13 Principles of Agroecology as an index. Cases include the global Assembly for Grassroots Innovations in Agroecology, US-based OpenTEAM, India’s Honeybee Network, the African Food Sovereignty Alliance, and the California-based Critical-Inclusive AgTech community.
Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela, Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies
“Resurveys as Opportunities for Decolonial Science: Ornithological Knowledge in the Colombian Chocó“
In the early 1900s, Elizabeth Kerr surveyed the birds of the lowland jungles of Chocó in Colombia, but her story and legacy were buried by traditional patriarchal narratives of the history of ornithology studies in one of the globe’s biodiversity hotspots. Ocampo-Peñuela and her team want to resurvey the birds from the Kerr expeditions with a focus on community engagement and gender equity. Two scouting field visits to gather pilot data will lay the groundwork for a National Geographic Explorers Grant. These visits will allow the team to identify and build authentic collaborations with local scientists and community members to ensure their involvement in the NatGeo expedition proposal, as well as identify expedition sites and logistics.
Alicia Riley, Assistant Professor, Sociology
“Using California Mortality Data to Make the Case for Immigrant Inclusion“
California is home to 10.5 million immigrants, nearly 20% of whom are undocumented. Due to exclusion from employment and social services, denial of basic rights, and targeting by law enforcement, undocumented immigrants are likely at greater risk of premature death and death from treatable causes. However, mortality data is not collected by legal status and, thus, it is nearly impossible to provide evidence of the mortality consequences of immigrant exclusion. The proposed project will address this gap using a novel method for studying mortality trends by legal status in California. The proposed analyses will answer urgent questions about the role of legal status in stratifying mortality risk and the potential for inclusive policy change to buffer those inequities.
Matt Sparke, Professor, Politics
“Comparing regional strategies for bio-pharma development in the public interest“
This project aims to advance knowledge of how and why region-specific strategies vary in their approaches to defining the public interest in developing bio-pharma innovation hubs. The research will build on three fields of knowledge: namely, the economic geography of value capture in global production networks; urban studies work on global city development; and multidisciplinary analysis in global health, science studies and law of efforts to expand affordable access to biomedical innovation. The research will evaluate how policy makers navigate the trade-offs between economic benefits for local regional economies and health benefits to national societies from investments in bio-pharma innovation. Comparing case studies in the US, Europe and South Africa, the proposed research will gather data to prepare a substantive case for making a NSF grant proposal.
Harvest Grant Recipients $500 to $1,800
George Bunch, Professor, Education
“Working with Teachers to Amplify the Curriculum for Multilingual Learners“
We propose workshops for local K-12 teachers and school leaders on the occasion of the publication of the second edition of Amplifying the Curriculum: Designing Quality Learning Opportunities for Multilingual Learners. The book argues for a shift from “simplification” to “amplification” as the guiding principle for the education of multilingual learners. Workshops will focus on how teachers can teach history as inquiry and “reading like historians,” as opposed to “patriotic” indoctrination or mere memorization of facts. Each workshop, co-facilitated by teacher leaders, will invite teachers to participate in sample activities and discuss potential collaborations to develop future amplified learning opportunities for multilingual learners.
Josephine Pham, Assistant Professor, Education
“Visualizing Racially Just Education through Storytelling and the Arts“
Since 2020, I have collaborated with educators, artists, and scholars to re-present my scholarly findings on racial justice teacher activism in
the form of comics. By showcasing moment-to-moment practices for social transformation enacted by teachers of color in classroom, school, and community
settings through storytelling and visual arts, these research products expand more accessible engagement and dissemination of scholarly findings that
communicate complex social processes and critical theories related to racial justice education. The Harvest Grant will support creative collaboration activities,
publication, and dissemination of these art-based research products in a book manuscript written for educators, practitioners, and scholarly audiences.
Book Manuscript Accelerator Recipients
Carlos Martinez, Assistant Professor, Latin American & Latino Studies
“Captive States: Migration and Expulsion on the Carceral Frontier“
Captive States: Migration and Expulsion on the Carceral Frontier” ethnographically examines how the U.S. deportation regime and asylum deterrence policies have transformed the U.S.-Mexico borderland region into a zone of captivity for asylum seekers and deportees. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted since 2018, this project examines the everyday lives and survival strategies of these communities in Tijuana, Mexico. Moving between migrant and homeless encampments, governmental and private shelters, drug rehabilitation centers, and activist-run medical clinics, this project analyzes the lives of those subjected to intersecting forms of confinement, expulsion, and attrition at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Article Publication Grant Recipients
Arshad Ali, Associate Professor, Education
“Ethnographic Otherwise: Tracing Absences, Reimagining Dialogue, and Ethical Research”
This workshop will focus on two articles which propose critical interventions in the field of ethnographic research methodology, challenging traditional extractive practices and advancing de/anti-colonial and relational approaches. • “Tracing the Absent” interrogates the ethnographic archive as a site of colonial power and argues that transcription is inherently politicized. It introduces a decolonial analytic method to examine absences, erasures, and suppressed potentialities, providing tools to uncover epistemic violences and reimagine ethnographic practices. • “Learning Through the Interview” reimagines the qualitative interview as a relational and pedagogical process, critiquing hierarchical dynamics and advancing ethical, dialogical, and transformative research designs. Together, these articles advance the field of qualitative inquiry by interrogating epistemic violence, centering participant agency, and offering innovative frameworks for decolonial and relational methodologies. Their significance lies in fostering critical, reflexive scholarship, expanding ethical research practices, and deepening engagement with marginalized experiences and political possibilities.
René Kissell, Assistant Professor, Education
“School Debt Under Fiscal Surveillance: An Embedded Case Study of State Takeovers of California Districts“
Education leaders across the country are under pressure to cut growing deficits through school closures and austere budget cuts, disproportionately in working-class Black and Brown communities. Some struggling school districts undergo a “takeover” of their local public schools, a policy mechanism where a democratically-elected school board is replaced with a single state administrator to govern the district. My research program brings together theoretical questions about the control of schools in society with the practical financial and political challenges to reinvesting in public education. In the case of school district debt, what is the role of California’s audit agency in shaping how communities make sense of the fiscal crises facing their local schools? My project examines emergent coalition-building efforts to bridge local organizing work across Northern and Southern California, and provides community stakeholders research-based, public resources on school finance inequities. In this workshop, I will assemble a panel of scholars to discuss school district governance with theories of the state, from policy mechanisms of inequality to theories of racial capitalism, and from ethnographic place-based histories to global networks of education reform. I will apply these insights to California, a state with a separate audit agency that has spurred an ecology of accountability standards, consultants, loan intermediaries, and audit culture.
