Mellon grant

The Mellon Foundation has awarded Trinity College a Higher Learning grant to support a new project, “Urban Environmental Justice in Hartford.”

A three-year, $500,000 grant will fund a humanities-centered project of community engagement, student and faculty research, and curricular development.

The three Trinity centers that proposed the project—the Center for Urban and Global Studies (CUGS), the Center for Hartford Engagement and Research (CHER), and the Center for Caribbean Studies (CCS)—will work in close collaboration with Hartford-based community partners at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center (HBSC), which aims to advance social justice and literary activism, and the Center for Leadership and Justice (CLJ), which houses the Greater Hartford Interfaith Action Alliance (GHIAA).

During nearly 11 years leading Trinity, President Joanne Berger-Sweeney has worked to strengthen partnerships in the College’s home city, leading to the expansion of Trinity’s footprint into downtown Hartford and launching CHER to coordinate the work of five core community engagement programs. “The important work of the Urban Environmental Justice in Hartford project is exemplary of Trinity’s continued urban engagement,” Berger-Sweeney said. “Trinity is proud to be a community of thinkers and doers, driven by our passion to contribute to the public good.”

The Trinity team leading this work includes Garth A. Myers, Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of Urban International Studies and director of the Center for Urban and Global Studies; Abigail Fisher Williamson, associate professor of political science and public policy and law; and Amanda J. Guzmán, assistant professor of anthropology; with support from Eric A. Galm, professor of music; Erica M. Crowley, CHER’s senior director of academic programs; and Mary Mahoney ’09, digital scholarship strategist.

The team aims to encourage informed public dialogue on how historical land-use decisions have imposed health and environmental consequences on Hartford’s predominantly Latine and Black residents and to build regional consensus to address challenges brought about by that history.

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