Seven faculty members named 2026 Research & Community Impact Faculty Fellows

September 29, 2026

By: Stephanie Zephir

The Anti-Racism Research & Community Impact Faculty Fellowship provides key support to University of Michigan (U-M) early-career faculty to advance their anti-racism scholarship. The fellowship aims to address a critical need among anti-racism scholars at U-M: to successfully advance in the tenure and promotion process while concurrently supporting their efforts to utilize their expertise to fight systemic racism through policy advocacy, practice, teaching, and/or community partnerships. The fellowship provides funding to support research and public engagement that align with the aims of the initiative.

“For many reasons, there is no more challenging a time to be an early career scholar than today. Consequently, this funding opportunity goes a long way toward reducing the insecurities and uncertainties for our recipients,” says Alford Young Jr., Bowman Center Faculty Director for Anti-Racism Research and University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor of Sociology, Afroamerican and African Studies, and Public Policy. “The need for research that is publicly impactful has intensified along with the professional challenges that confront the scholars who aspire to meet that need. I am thrilled that this grant opportunity can help minimize these challenges while amplifying the potential for impact.”

The Phillip J. Bowman Center for Scholarship to Practice is home to funding initiatives and programs created to facilitate U-M community engagement around research and scholarship focused on racial inequality, racial justice, and anti-racist praxis. The anti-racism research focus supports a variety of activities to catalyze innovation in research and scholarship, as well as inform practice, public engagement, and action to advance anti-racist principles and organizing.

Please join us as we congratulate our newest cohort of Anti-Racism Research & Community Impact Faculty Fellows!

2026 Research & Community Impact Faculty Fellows

The Social Construction of Racialized Muslims in the U.S.

Nafeesa Andrabi
Assistant Professor of Sociology, College of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts, Ann Arbor

Anti-Muslim racism is a rampant global phenomenon rooted in the long history of Western colonialism and its enduring legacy of structural inequality and violence. While anti-racism research in the United States has improved our understanding of how structural racism affects Latino and Black populations, the consequences of racism on Muslim wellbeing remain minimally understood. Increasingly, scholars are naming anti-Muslim racism, anti-Arab racism, and anti-Palestinian racism as consequential structural realities, yet we know little about how these processes operate in the day-to-day or how they relate to one another. There are limited methodological strategies to operationalize and empirically identify this population without a clearly defined set of visible ethnoracial characteristics that U.S. society uses to categorize people as Muslim (i.e., skin tone, hair texture, language, name, and religious markers). In the proposed study, I will develop a series of survey experiments to interrogate the pathways through which anti-Muslim racism operates by isolating cues of country of origin, name, language, and phenotype on classifications of Muslimness by White American respondents. The pretesting and piloting work done through support of this grant will allow me to refine my study design and apply for a larger grant to expand these experiments to a nationally representative study sample. The findings from both this pilot and future work will make important contributions to our understanding and measurement of Muslim racialization and the mechanisms of anti-Muslim racism in the United States.

Art as Radical Resistance: From Paul Laurence Dunbar to Jim Crow’s Tears

Kristopher Johnson
Assistant Professor of Jazz Trumpet, School of Music, Theatre, and Dance, Ann Arbor

This project examines Black artistic expression as a form of radical resistance within systems shaped by racial constraint. Centered on the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and excerpts from my original musical work Jim Crow’s Tears, it explores how Black artists navigate authorship, representation, and identity across historical and contemporary contexts.

At the turn of the 20th century, Dunbar’s work reflected a tension between artistic authenticity and the expectations of predominantly white audiences, particularly through the reception of his dialect and standard English poetry. This tension reveals how systems of racial representation have historically shaped which forms of Black expression are visible, valued, and sustained.

In collaboration with vocalist and composer Milton Suggs, musical settings of Dunbar’s poetry will be presented alongside excerpts from Jim Crow’s Tears, performed by the University of Michigan Jazz Ensemble. Structured as a lecture-performance, the project examines these works within the historical legacy of minstrelsy and its ongoing influence on contemporary cultural representation.

By placing these materials in dialogue, the project investigates how Black artists encode humanity, complexity, and resistance within constrained systems. It culminates in a public lecture-performance, supported by student research, and a high-quality audio and video recording for broader dissemination.

Positioning music as a method of inquiry, this work advances anti-racist scholarship by examining how racism operates within artistic production while creating space for critical reflection, dialogue, and deeper engagement with the history and future of Black expression.

Mapping Pat Parker's Black Feminist Anti-racism

SaraEllen Strongman
Assistant Professor of Afroamerican Studies, College of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts, Ann Arbor

My project “Mapping Pat Parker’s Anti-Racism” seeks to contribute to the growing awareness of and interest in Pat Parker’s work and influence by making publicly available information about her 1975 cross-country reading tour. As a black lesbian feminist poet, Parker navigated issues of racism in her poetry and frequently reflected on the racism she encountered in the world, particularly within the feminist movement and in women’s spaces. By bringing together Parker’s poetry with her personal correspondence, flyers advertising her readings, and press coverage of her performances, this project highlights how Parker’s anti-racism manifested in both her writing and her broader work as an artist and activist. Thus, this online mapping project contributes not just to public awareness of Parker but also, in line with the Bowman Center’s mission, preserves and disseminates histories of racism and anti-racism in the second-wave feminist movement, including within feminist literary and publishing spaces.

State-level Laws Mandating the Inclusion of Local Native Histories and Cultures in K-12 Education

Cherry Meyer
Assistant Professor of American Culture and Linguistics, College of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts, Ann Arbor

Michigan is home to 12 federally recognized Tribal Nations, yet comprehensive instruction about local Native Nations’ histories, cultures, and sovereignty is not required across K–12 schooling. This policy gap contributes to Indigenous erasure and the persistence of stereotypes, undermining public understanding of treaty rights and tribal nationhood. Grounded in prior comparative research on state mandates to teach local Indigenous histories—and informed by the historical origins of Wisconsin’s Act 31, which emerged in response to racist violence and public ignorance surrounding Ojibwe treaty rights—this project advances an explicitly anti-racist, community-engaged policy research agenda. Over one year, the project will conduct interviews with Tribal education leaders, Native educators, Michigan Department of Education staff, legislators/committee staff, district curriculum leaders, and teacher professional development providers to assess the potential anti-racist impacts (and implementation risks) of Michigan legislation mandating instruction on local Native Nations. Findings will be synthesized into a public-facing report with Michigan-specific recommendations addressing consultation with Tribal Nations, funding, professional learning, and accountability. The project will culminate in a K–12 Education about Natives in Michigan Policy Summit convening Native community stakeholders, educators, and policymakers to refine recommendations and identify actionable pathways for durable policy and practice change.

Project SHINE: Bringing Black Disabled Motherhood into Focus (Phase II)

Brandie Bentley
Assistant Professor of Family Medicine, Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor

Black disabled women experience some of the poorest maternal health outcomes in the United States, driven by the intersecting effects of racism, ableism, and sexism. Despite these risks, their experiences remain largely absent from maternal health equity work more broadly, where the intersection of race and disability is rarely centered. This absence is not neutral; it shapes how care is delivered, how policies are designed, and whose experiences are prioritized.

Project SHINE is a multi-phase, community-engaged research and dissemination initiative that centers Black disabled mothers as knowledge producers and translates lived expertise into scholarship, representation, and action-oriented resources to inform systemic change. Phase II, the focus of this proposal, is a one-year, arts-based research and storytelling study designed to expand representation and public understanding of Black disabled motherhood.

This phase will engage approximately 10 Black disabled mothers in Southeast Michigan in professional portrait sessions and structured narrative reflections. Grounded in Disability Critical Race Theory and Reproductive Justice, the project examines how racism, ableism, and gender shape maternal experiences, as well as how these forces influence patterns of representation and erasure. Portraits and narratives will be disseminated through a publicly accessible website and curated social media campaign, in partnership with community, advocacy, and clinical organizations. The project positions participants as authors of their own stories and uses visual storytelling to challenge dominant representations and bring often overlooked or misrepresented experiences into focus.

Making the Invisible Visible: Restoring Dignity and Community Connections at Woodlawn Cemetery, Ypsilanti, MI

Tiffany Fryer
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, College of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts, Ann Arbor

This proposal seeks support for the Woodlawn Cemetery Restoration Project, a community-embedded local heritage initiative seeking to reclaim this sacred space and give it the recognition it deserves for the role it played in supporting Ypsilanti’s Black community at a time when racism and exclusion were the norm. This phase will continue community-engaged clean up efforts, help to facilitate community listening sessions, provide important data for pursuing additional research and grant funding, maintain a public project exhibition, and support genealogical research that seeks to name the interred and provide a starting point for reconstructing their life histories. This work is conducted in close partnership with the African American Cultural and Historical Museum of Washtenaw County, as well as several other local community organizations, government agencies, and environmental services providers.

Racism and the Uterine Fibroid Experience Across the Life Course of Black Immigrant Women: The Fibroids FLOW Study

Safyer McKenzie-Sampson
John G. Searle Assistant Professor of Health Behavior and Health Equity, School of Public Health, Ann Arbor

In the US, Black women have the highest rate of uterine fibroids compared to women from other racial/ethnic groups. Black women are also more likely to develop uterine fibroids at an earlier age, experience more severe symptoms and surgical interventions to remove their uteruses. However, there are disparities within the Black population, as research suggests that Black immigrant women have a higher rate of uterine fibroids than their US-born counterparts. The higher rate of uterine fibroids among Black immigrants may be due to higher exposure to anti-Black racism and anti-immigrant xenophobia in the US across the life course; yet this hypothesis remains untested. It is important to examine the ways in which racism shapes the uterine fibroid treatment experience of Black women through a nativity lens, as it may offer insights into gaps in clinical care that could be remediated by anti-racist interventions. This pilot project will use a sequential mixed-methods design to quantitatively examine how exposure to institutional and structural/interpersonal forms of racism influences the rates of uterine fibroid development among African-, Caribbean-, and US-born Black women who participated in the longitudinal Black Women’s Health Study. Additionally, through a community-based participatory research approach, I will recruit 45 premenopausal Black women (15 US-born, 15 African-born, 15 Caribbean-born) currently living in New York City who have received treatment for uterine fibroids in the past three years to participate in a qualitative exploration of the ways that racism shapes their clinical treatment experiences. The findings of this study will be directly shared with the Black community through a community-centered dissemination event in New York City and expectantly identify gaps in the uterine fibroid clinical treatment cascade where racism is most prevalent, providing opportunities for the development of culturally tailored anti-racist interventions to reduce the uterine fibroid burden.