Blog

For Avery Sands ’26, environmental science is inseparable from the cities, public spaces, and communities people belong to. Through her Marcuss Fellowship, Avery designed an independent honors thesis investigating whether Hartford’s former waste incinerator was linked to mercury concentrations in Hartford County ponds. Combining fieldwork, lab analysis, and community engagement, her project reflected a deep commitment to urban environmentalism and environmental justice. Her findings offered valuable insight into the overlapping environmental pressures shaping urban ecosystems. Based in Hartford and driven by scientific curiosity and public impact, Avery’s work shows how undergraduate research can connect rigorous environmental science with the everyday realities of community life.

Zeynep Oguzer ’26, a double major in Human Rights and Psychology with minors in Urban Studies and Philosophy, spent the past year investigating why people remain unprepared for disasters even when the risks are well known. Through a Marcuss-funded project shaped by both personal experience and academic rigor, she examined how trust in government, religiosity, fatalism, and political ideology influence earthquake preparedness in Türkiye. Her research revealed that preparedness is not one-size-fits-all, but deeply shaped by how different communities understand risk, authority, and responsibility. Rooted in urgent human questions and carried out with impressive methodological care, Oguzer’s work shows how undergraduate research can generate insights with real-world relevance

Trinity sophomore Bennet Gessler grew up in Germany, spent two years at UWC Costa Rica, and found his academic home in East Asian politics. This year, a research assistantship with Prof. Reo Matsuzaki sparked something bigger: a CUGS-funded month in Taiwan, where Bennet interviewed people working in business and trade to understand how the “One China” policy shapes identity in everyday life. In this post, he shares what he learned, how he found interviewees, and why the project is only just beginning.

by Xiangming Chen Director, Urban Studies and Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of Global Urban Studies and Sociology Student Research/Scholarship at and After Trinity Student research in Urban Studies has been steady since ...

In Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, Alex Goiris '26 led an interdisciplinary project sponsored by the Center for Caribbean Studies. He combined visual analysis and interviews to uncover how fragmented sidewalks shape daily life. By linking design and psychology, the research highlights how uneven pavements affect accessibility, emotions, and sense of belonging, and how small urban details can reveal much larger stories about inclusion and public space.

Supported by the Center for Urban and Global Studies Summer Research Grant, Vy Duong ’26 investigated how labor export shapes social structures in her home country, Vietnam. Her project, Beyond Remittances, examines the cultural and generational shifts occurring as more young people leave home for work in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Through grant-funded research supported by the Center for Urban and Global Studies, Yulia Puhareva'26 spent the summer in Serbia. She was working with the University of Belgrade students on redesigning Autokomanda highway interchange for a better neighborhood connectivity. Blending engineering and urban studies, they used GIS and AR tools to propose people-centered redesigns, showing how even the most car-dominated infrastructure can turn into safe, human-inclusive spaces.

On April 10, 2025, Rio Smith presented his project “Understanding Urban Margins: How Statistics and Urban Policy Police Tokyo’s Homeless Geographies” as a 2025 Marcuss Fellow. Smith’s project examined how Tokyo’s state statistics represent the homeless population and their motivation in choosing how to represent these populations.

Isabella Paris is an Urban Studies and International Studies double major and one of the 2025 Marcuss Fellows. On April 10, 2025, she presented her project “Transnational Lives and Opportunities: An Analysis of Immigrant Experiences in New York City and Barcelona.” Paris describes the bulk of her project as analyzing immigrant community development and assimilation in both cities.

This past summer junior Paola Evangelista spent two weeks documenting and researching gentrification in Mexico City. During her summer research she took photos across the city capturing images of the ...