From the CUGS Director, Garth Myers
CUGS has been a busy place this Fall. It is going to be even busier in Spring 2020! The Cities Program and Global Vantage Point Lecture Series have brought a lot of energy to 70 Vernon Street.
Our Kelter Post-Doctoral Fellow Emily Yen, IIE-SRF visiting scholar Savas Ergul, program coordinator Gabby Nelson, and urban studies faculty Julie Gamble and David Lukens have also been putting energies toward an exciting array of events in the coming term. CUGS will host two major workshops in March. The first, on Understanding Gentrification, Diversity and Revitalization, takes place on March 6th. It is inspired by research conducted by Stan Marcuss ’63 and Victoria Alsina Burgues in D.C., building now toward analysis of how these three keywords intersect (or don’t!) in Hartford and other small cities in New England.
The second workshop will occur March 26 and 27. Funded by the Hartford Consortium for Higher Education and held in collaboration with UConn-Hartford and the University of Hartford, its focus is on Urban Living in the Age of Climate Change. More information on both is in this newsletter.
We also have a busy slate of GVP talks this spring. We will be searching for a new Kelter post-doc and a new IIE-SRF visiting scholar, as Savas’s and Emily’s time with us winds down. We have another round of student research awards and the China summer course to look forward to.
All through both terms, CUGS is providing major support to the events of the CT World Affairs Council. Lastly, CUGS and URST are pleased to begin the new graduate certificate in urban planning in collaboration with the graduate program in public policy. We welcome your participation in everything we do!
From the Urban Studies Director, Yipeng Shen
As the acting director of Urban Studies, I am proud to work with a group of ingenious, passionate, and congenial faculty and staff members. We are not big size-wise, but we have big plans and ideas to contribute to the College’s mission of urban and global engagement this year.
Dean Xiangming Chen is on leave and has served as an invited speaker at multiple European academic organizations. Professor Garth Myers gave three talks in London and talks in Washington DC, Lawrence, Kansas, and Storrs, CT this fall. We are very excited to have David Lukens, an expert in economic restructuring and urban governance in Korea, join us as a multi-year visiting assistant professor. Assistant Professor Julie Gamble began her second year at Trinity where she taught in the gateway Cities Program and also participated in the first GenUrb Conference on gender, urbanization and the global south at York University where she presented on ongoing work on transport infrastructure in Quito, Ecuador.
We are streamlining our Urban Studies curriculum to better serve the growing number of majors and students who have an interest in urban society and planning. We look forward to another year of productive teaching, research, and community engagement at the heart of New England.
