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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 ...

Alyssa Hurley ‘26 and Aleema Kelly ‘26 were invited to participate in Technos International Week, an event held in June by the Technos International College of Japan in Tokyo which promotes international exchange and appreciation of Japanese life and culture. In this setting, Alyssa and Aleema researched projects focusing on tea ceremonies and music, respectively.

This year’s Marcuss Fellows worked on global urban studies research projects from two different lenses. Rory Trani ’24 was inspired by having her first tastes of freedom as a teenager on the Portland, Oregon area metro system (known as the MAX) and by her experience of the efficient, modern metro system while studying away in Copenhagen. Rory used these experiences, an extensive literature review, and interviews conducted on the trains in both cities to compare the two transit systems under the guidance of Professor Garth Myers. Hannah Lorenzo ’24 was inspired by her identity as a Filipina American to investigate the role and importance of Asian-owned food businesses in the Hartford area. While Rory took a comparative global approach, Hannah investigated the importance of complexities of diasporic communities in Hartford while being advised by Professor Keavy McFadden.

Paz Daniela Ortiz Santa Maria '26 conducted research last summer supported by the Tanaka Fund at CUGS across Japan in search of an understanding of similarities between Japanese Shinto and Peruvian indigenous belief systems from the Inca period.

Sanya is a district in Tokyo that had a day laborer market which peaked in the 1980s. Today there is a gap in the literature about the decline of the region since. Rio Smith ’26 spent his summer studying the evolution of Sanya since the eighties and what the district is like today using a Tanaka Fund for International Research summer grant through CUGS. Smith is an urban studies major with a minor in philosophy who grew up between Los Angeles and Tokyo.

Shenzhen is a city known for being an overnight metropolis. The city has experienced rapid urbanization since the 1990s which has affected communities in numerous ways. The effect of urbanization on fisherfolk communities in Shenzhen is what John Li ’24 spent his summer researching using a grant from the China Urban Studies Summer Fund.

Julius Benthin is a senior urban studies and economics double major who recently presented his research on the HafenCity development in Hamburg with a grant received as a Marcuss Fellow. ...

As one of the first Trinity students to receive the Rosemary and Stan Marcuss ’63 Fellowship for Research in Urban Studies, Kendra Keelan ’23 recently completed her senior thesis on academic and institutional community engagement at Trinity and other colleges.