News and Announcements from CUGS
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.
“B-Girls run the world” says Adyanna Odom ‘23, who studied the culture of breakdancing women (B-Girls) in Houston over the summer with a grant from the Center for Urban and Global Studies. Through her coursework as an International Studies major with a concentration in Global Hip Hop, Odom discovered a gap in the literature about B-Girls. She wants to add to the academic literature on B-Girls by sharing their voices in circles that have not been open to them before.
Aiden Chisholm ’23 knew he wanted to apply for a Center for Urban and Global Studies (CUGS) research grant during his junior year – it was a matter of finding the right research project. After spending time considering a question to explore, a topic that combined his academic interests in Spanish and Arabic became apparent during his semester abroad in Granada, Spain.
