VCU news

Virginia Commonwealth University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy and Environments and the Humanities Research Center have launched a new initiative to support environmental research collaborations across the university.

In fall 2022, the Transdisciplinary Environmental Research Incubator awarded its first four projects a combined $66,000 in seed funding. The four teams include a diverse range of scholars, from fields including urban policy, philosophy, sculpture, art education, interior design, history, sociology, religious studies, supply-chain analytics, engineering and environmental science.

The incubator was developed and run by Damian Pitt, Ph.D., an associate professor of urban planning in the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs and associate director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy and Environments, and Jesse Goldstein, Ph.D., an associate professor of sociology in the College of Humanities and Sciences and director of the Humanities Research Center’s Environmental Humanities Lab.

Their goal was to create a space for non-STEM researchers to develop environmental research collaborations aligned with the themes set out in ONE VCU’s Quest Goal 4: Supporting Sustainable Energy and Environments, Goldstein said.

”Our goal was not to exclude STEM researchers, and we actually had a number of faculty who contributed actively,” he said. “However, we wanted to create a space where humanistic, policy and social scientific scholars could set the transdisciplinary research agenda.”

Funds for the initiative came from VCU’s Office of Vice President for Research and Innovation through support for VCU-wide research centers. In 2022-23, both the HRC and ISEE are in their inaugural year as university-wide centers.

“We are excited to see how two newly funded and supported VCU research institutes and centers, the ISEE and the HRC, are coming together to synergistically advance critical environmental and sustainability challenges through this joint funding mechanism,” said P. Srirama Rao, Ph.D., vice president for research and innovation. “This enterprisewide, transdisciplinary effort involving teams of talented and dedicated faculty, students, and staff will ultimately lead to targeted solutions for some of society's grand challenges.”

“It is very gratifying to witness this type of collaboration across disciplines and to see the excitement of our faculty who found a welcome home in the incubator, not only for research collaborations and partnerships but also for mentoring and support across ranks,” said Cristina Stanciu, Ph.D., director of the HRC and an associate professor of English. “The incubator will soon become a model for future research collaborations across the university.”

Over 40 faculty members joined the Incubator and four projects emerged from the collaboration. The projects are:

Loose Parts: Exploring Child-Directed Eco-Adventure Play

This project will create a series of experimental “adventure play” events with elementary and junior high school students using discarded and reused materials. Adventure, or “loose parts” play traces its roots to post World War II Europe, where it was inspired by children finding self-determination through playing with materials in bombed-out urban areas.

With this project the researchers ask how adventure play might be increasingly salient today, as children will have no choice but to play with and work upon a world irrevocably ruined by climate change. Documentaries will be made of these events as they build toward establishing a new kind of experimental adventure playground in Richmond.

“Our project asks deeply humanistic questions about the value of open-ended play and how human discards and ’leftovers’ can provide a vibrant material space for learning,” said Corin Hewitt, a professor in the Department of Sculpture + Extended Media in the School of the Arts.

Hewitt is collaborating on the project with Aspen Brinton, Ph.D., associate professor in the School of World Studies; Bill Muth, Ph.D., emeritus professor in the School of Education; Kristin Carleton, an architect and assistant professor in the Department of Interior Design; and Keenan Rowe, assistant professor in the Department of Craft/Material Studies.

“Our group will be launching a series of play events at various schools and parks this coming spring and fall which will lead to some deep community analysis of the value of open-ended loose parts adventure play as both a part of the curriculum as well as a crucial part of processes of empowerment for children,” Hewitt said. “Also, we will be holding community discussions with parents, educators and academics to talk through the value of this type of play for children as they face the climate crisis as well as many other challenges in their futures.”

Climate Justice Materials Research Lab

This project aims to investigate the nature, history and function of materials that shape our lives and to imagine the creation of new materials and modes of production, consumption and disposal that support sustainable energy and environments.

“Currently buildings and their operations are responsible for about 40% of the annual global CO2 emissions, so it is critical that representatives from the building industry contribute to innovating ways to change that, which is one of my reasons for wanting to participate in this project,” Carleton said. “I have been excited to learn how other disciplines research materiality and its various impacts, uses and meanings in our world. Our overlapping approaches have the potential to evolve into investigations that could be universally valuable to all disciplines, and lead to innovative processes for creating a more sustainable future.”

Along with Carleton, the group includes Jeff Shockley, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Supply Chain Management and Analytics; Lillian Lewis, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Art Education; Hewitt; Rocio Gomez, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of History; Mark Wood, Ph.D., an associate professor in the School of World Studies; Rowe; Jennifer Rhee, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of English; Emily Smith, an assistant professor in the Department of Interior Design; Stephen Fong, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Chemical and Life Science Engineering; Radhika Barua, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering; Cory Jensen, Ph.D., of the Department of Chemical and Life Science Engineering; and Shruti Syal, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the Wilder School.

Cultivating Communities of Healing, Resistance and Sovereignty

For generations, farming has been used by Black people to build self-determined communities and to resist oppressive structures. Working in collaboration with community research partner Duron Chavis, founder of Happily Natural Day and a leading figure in Black food justice in Richmond and nationally, this project asks: What grows in Black-led urban agricultural spaces, beyond food?

The project is led by a team that includes, along with Chavis; Meghan Gough, Ph.D., associate professor in the Wilder School; Susan Bodnar-Deren, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Sociology; and John Jones, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Center for Environmental Studies.

“Black-led urban farming is cultivating more than just food. It is a way of creating community goods like a vibrant social and ecological system, and it is a way of advancing land and food sovereignty,” Bodnar-Deren said.

Their project incorporates a mixed method approach to establish a community-values profile and counter-mapping agenda toward enabling Black-led urban agriculture spaces to thrive and establishing their centrality to both environmental and climate justice infrastructure.

The Urban Green Equity and Resilience Project

Increased urban flooding, heat stress and green space access are important climate justice considerations. While green infrastructure is critical to address these issues, the planning, implementation and management of these projects does not always go as intended.

Led by a team that includes Shruti Syal, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Wilder School, Jennifer Ciminelli, an assistant professor in the Center for Environmental Studies, and Lillian Lewis, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Art Education, this group will analyze green infrastructure projects with attention to both human and non-human actors.

“We envision this network map as a guide to identify interactions to amplify, actors to support, projects to coordinate and structural changes to pursue,” Syal said.