Davarian L. Baldwin, Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies at Trinity College, has received a two-year grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for his Smart Cities Research Lab.
This award will provide educational and research support for communities examining the financial relationships between campuses and their host communities through the lab’s Payment in Lieu of Taxes and Wealth Redistribution Analysis Project.
It also helps to support collaboration with the University of Minnesota on The Renewal Project, which provides archival and pedagogical training to project teams at nine institutions working on archival research, curriculum development, and commemorative placemaking.
Funding will support travel, research, training, and workshops in communities both nationally and internationally. In addition, it will support undergraduate fellowships for case studies, program management, and event scheduling.
Housed within the Trinity Social Justice Institute, the Smart Cities Research Lab studies and consults on best practices for building equitable urban communities. Baldwin, author of In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities are Plundering Our Cities, founded the lab in 2021.
Read more about Baldwin’s work with the Smart Cities Research Lab in this story from earlier in the year.
Thanks to the extraordinary generosity of alumni, parents, families, and friends, the Trinity College Fund raised $10.5 million in fiscal year 2026, marking the most successful year for annual giving in the College’s history.
Trinity is number 5 for liberal arts colleges and moved up to number 36 nationally among all colleges and universities on LinkedIn’s second annual list of best colleges for long-term career success in the U.S.
Breanna Pitta ’27 and Carla Schmidt ’27 were selected for the yearlong National Environmental Leadership Fellowship by the Rachel Carson Council to support environmental action in their communities.
Katsuya Izumi, senior lecturer in language and culture studies, has received a grant award from the Northeast Asian Council of the Association for Asian Studies to support research for an upcoming book.
