Charlotte Urban Institute welcomes new Gambrell Faculty Fellows
by Asha Ellison
If you ask a Charlottean what it means to live a great life, responses will vary.
For one, a great life includes living in a growing city with an edge on finance and technology. For another, access to intentionally-designed greenways would supplement their fitness journey. And where one values the therapeutic and nutritional benefits of a community garden, another desires something a bit more aspirational: a chance to travel the world. So, they happily take free language classes at a neighborhood community center until they can afford an international adventure.
What qualifies as a great life is subjective and often individualistic. But that doesn’t mean we stop pursuing it.
Over the next year and a half, with support from The Gambrell Foundation, ten UNC Charlotte faculty members will participate in the kind of innovative scholarship that does just that – lead to a greater quality of life. As the seventh cohort of the Charlotte Urban Institute’s Gambrell Faculty Fellowship, professors Dante Bryant, Ph.D., Helen Davies, Ph.D., Nathaniel Elberfeld, M.S., Marianna B. Ganapini, Ph.D., Braveheart Gillani, Ph.D., Carlos Gonzalez-Calderon, Ph.D., Sijia Qian, Ph.D., and Tamara Williams, MFA, will study topics that investigate everything from the health implications of transportation, reimagine the built environment, inspire awe and foster connection among men in the caring professions and more. Since its inception in 2019, the Gambrell Faculty Fellowship has engaged 59 researchers, thinkers and doers across 36 valuable research and creative projects in the Charlotte region.
Meet the scholars of cohort seven:
Inspiring awe and fostering connection for male care-workers
Dante Bryant and Braveheart Gillani understand the significance of deep male friendships. After all, they themselves have a friendship where neither is afraid to share deeply. Meaningful connections and solid bonds are critical to the well-being of humans, especially men who are less encouraged than their female counterparts to establish close platonic relationships. This is particularly concerning for Charlotte’s male care worker population – especially as the city booms.
“As the city grows, we’ll see more men filling positions in education, hospitals and healthcare, social services and public health,” Gillani said. “This project is intervention development because we’ll need to retain them to meet the needs of the region.”
Bryant and Gillani point out that men connect differently than women. “Awe-inspiring moments deepen connections for men,” Bryant said. “Take sports for instance. When teams play their most difficult and best seasons together, those transcendent moments where they’re blown away with the experience bring them closer. Outside of religious and athletic environments, we don’t have many other spaces to connect that way.”
Bryant and Gillani will begin their project by documenting the city’s first baseline of male relational health across caring sectors. They’ll begin with a survey to assess men’s feelings and attitudes on belonging, awe, loneliness, relationship support and gauge their intentions for career retention. From there, the duo will establish a peer-support cohort to undergo a six-month program of facilitated experiences intended to inspire awe and lay the foundation for deep friendships.
In addition to strengthening belonging, relationships, and awe among men in caring professions, other goals for the study include reducing professional isolation, improving peer support and daily well-being, stabilizing the workforce by decreasing the attrition and churn of male practitioners, and developing scalable and replicable practices regional organizations can use to better support their workers.
Embodied resilience: African diaspora dance for women’s health and community
Associate Professor of dance Tamara Williams will lead a community-engaged wellness initiative that uses traditional Black and African diasporic dances to heal, reaffirm identity and build community among Black women in Charlotte.
Working with two groups of women, ages 18-25 and 32-45, Williams will use dance practices such as the African American Ring Shout, elements of Brazilian Samba and Cuban Palo to help Black women experiencing mental and physical ailments from anxiety, depression, heart conditions, fibroids and more. Williams, also a Reiki practitioner and capoeirista, or master of the Afro-Brazilian martial art Capoeira, said she was inspired to lead this project after years of community from yearslong conversations.
“I’ve been working in the Tuckaseegee community as well as other communities around Charlotte for years [and] have listened to women talk about the disparities between their knowledge of their own cultural movement practices due to eradication and education systems, and how those practices might ameliorate their physical health and mental health,” she said. “We are [also] working with local healthcare providers that will meet with the women and share resources to continue their healthcare practices in hopes to provide sustainable practices in our communities.”
Williams’ project will be documented creatively through photography, videography, journaling and other artistic archival mechanisms. In addition to bringing women together in community settings that encourage cultural education, preservation, reclamation of space, narratives and body, the project will conclude with a culminating community performance to celebrate heritage and healing.
Williams’ project will also offer a replicable model for integrating cultural arts into community wellness – which she says is essential to public health and heritage work.
Designing for awe
Nathaniel Elberfeld, assistant professor of architecture, appreciates the power of intentionally designed spaces that enhance the human experience. He believes all humans, regardless of socioeconomic status, deserve access to beautiful and functional environments – all costs and competition considered.
From parks and public art to the very texture, color and materials used to construct a shopping center or library, architectural elements of design can influence how we engage with and within spaces, how we feel inside them, and can also spark innovative building – especially in the housing sector.
For his Gambrell Faculty Fellowship project, Elberfeld will produce a community exhibition that serves as a platform to inspire collective imagination about the future of urban development and aspirational housing alternatives for the city. The project draws inspiration from the city’s historical architecture and textile systems, and will feature mixed-media displays that open dialogue and discussion about density, neighborhood character and contemporary design methods. Elberfeld will gauge the awe-factor of his drawings and models by evaluating attendees’ feelings and thoughts as they explore housing concepts that emphasize and maintain Charlotte’s unique beauty and charm.
“I’m not trying to solve the city’s housing challenges,” Elberfeld said. ”Homes are being built – and that’s a good thing! I only hope to expand people’s thinking about what is possible beyond the regulations that exist.”
Elberfeld hopes to host his exhibition in an approachable, accessible community venue where the public can learn more about the benefits of mixed housing and where he can dispel misconceptions about urban design and development.
Designing creative spaces of belonging for refugees
In May 2022, Charlotte became the first Certified Welcoming city in the southeastern United States. The City, a resettlement hub for refugees, received this formal designation from Welcoming America which honors municipalities that not only share their values, but also have dedicated policies and programs committed to immigrant inclusion. But how can organizations concerned with immigrant welfare ensure they are meeting the safety and mental health needs of Charlotte’s growing foreign-born population?
Professors of counseling Dania Fakhro and Kristie Opiola will spend their time in the Gambrell Faculty Fellowship using human-centered design and trauma-informed approaches to co-create healing spaces alongside refugees – not for them. In these spaces, where refugees may be fearful and uncertain about their futures, Fakhro and Opiola will host eight to ten group sessions, incorporating culturally-relevant expressive arts and activities – such as music, mixed-media collaging, clay, fiber arts and more to foster safety, belonging and overall well-being.
“I’m excited to be with this community,” said Fakhro. “I learn so much from their resilience because they are strong no matter what.”
Through this participatory, community-centered approach, the fellows will collaborate with refugees to identify their needs, and co-develop a six-to-eight-session therapeutic program that implements expressive, culturally-aligned arts. They will also produce a guidebook based on their findings and experiences so that Charlotte organizations can adapt to their work with immigrants and refugees.
“I have a sense of expectancy about this project,” said Opiola. “I want to meet them where they are.”
Mobility and the air we breathe: Transportation emissions and chronic disease
Carlos Gonzalez-Calderon, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, will spend the next 18 months studying how to help Charlotte breathe easier.
His Gambrell research project will examine how transportation-related air pollution contributes to diseases like asthma, diabetes and cardiovascular conditions. Also a medical and public health practitioner, Gonzalez-Calderon will review historic and current land use practices to determine how pollutants near major corridors impact health disparities across neighborhoods. In addition to a healthier city, Gonzalez-Calderon seeks to bring Charlotte’s first integrated view of the city’s mobility-pollution-health nexus.
“The goal is to build an interactive health equity atlas that allows us to look at emissions data and neighborhood health,” he said.
Gonzalez-Calderon believes this research is critical to the burgeoning region and hopes the atlas leads local officials, community partners and policymakers to better make informed decisions about transportation investments that create healthier communities for all. Particularly, he hopes the atlas will be beneficial to the city’s strategic mobility and 2040 comprehensive plan.
“The primary purpose of this tool is to bring awareness to the priority areas in the city,” he said. “It will help us identify issues and help us find solutions – but most importantly, we’ll know where to start.”
In addition to identifying the city’s high-burden neighborhoods, Gonzalez-Calderon will translate his findings into a policy brief for transportation and health agencies, and believes the atlas will be beneficial to other fast-growing southeastern cities.
AccessAI: Community-driven literacy for a flourishing Charlotte
Artificial intelligence, or AI, is reshaping our world faster than ever imagined. From medical offices and banking institutions to universities and beyond, AI is now used as a tool to accelerate and streamline processes across industries. But is it really simplifying or enhancing our lives – and who gets to be a part of the conversation?
Helen Davies, Marianna B. Ganapini and Sijia Qian, professors in the school of Data Science, will take a multidisciplinary dive into the world of AI to bridge the gap between academic discussions of AI and its practical, everyday applications. Through user narratives and experiences external to academia, this group of researchers will study all aspects of AI use, including its environmental impact on communities, ethical considerations, and the importance of public literacy about its benefits and potential pitfalls.
“The way we talk about using AI in academia, doesn’t match the way others talk about it in non-ademic contexts,” said Davies. “In higher education, the focus is more on job opportunities and the theoretical impacts of AI, but there is more to uncover.”
Because communities across the city experience AI differently, leading to disparities in opportunity, confidence and quality of life, their AccessAI project will focus on building fair and accessible AI literacy through research, dialogue and shared learning. The team will establish a “living lab” or a continuous cycle of community engagement and co-creation. Through this lab, they will analyze digital spaces to understand current AI use, facilitate open community conversations, and co-design AI literacy tools with those who call the city home.
To keep up with cohort seven’s academic and creative projects, catch up with previous Gambrell Faculty Fellows, or to receive research and policy analysis on the Charlotte region, subscribe to the Charlotte Urban Institute newsletter here.