Data Ecologies Network

Project Co-Convenors: Jesse Goldstein and Jenny Rhee

The Data Ecologies Network aims to account for the data economy’s multiple scales and interlinked ecologies by connecting the infrastructural with the algorithmic, and the innovative with the extractive. How can we connect the algorithmic injustices of predictive policing or precision medicine to the environmental injustices of data infrastructures? How can we trace the neocolonial linkages that place Virginia’s data centers within a global matrix of extractive economies that includes precarious gig workers across the Global South (who label data and moderate content for machine learning systems), high-tech production in China, and toxic mining and e-waste sacrifice zones in the Congo and in Ghana and Pakistan, respectively? We will respond to these questions through a series of workshops with invited fellows and a public panel in spring 2025. 

Richmond Toxic Tours

Project Director: Kai Bosworth

The environmental justice movement in the US south first piloted “toxic tours” as a method of showing politicians and outsiders the noxious conditions in which they lived and worked. As an alternative method of history storytelling, toxic tours combine science, public history, and political organizing in order to create stronger ties to the places we inhabit, and the diverse communities therein. For human geographers and political ecologists, toxic tours further demonstrate that regular people are themselves expert creators of knowledge concerning urban environmental history, and of political diagnoses of the structural causes of such inequality. Along with students who take INTL 325 Nature Culture Justice, we are piloting diverse ways of documenting Richmond’s environmental histories and presents, including through zines, web materials, and in-person toxic tours. For more information, contact Kai Bosworth at bosworthk@vcu.edu. 

University Sustainability

Project Director: Jesse Goldstein and Kai Bosworth, with student researcher Caroline May

Institutions of higher education position themselves as progressive leaders on questions of sustainability. But to what extent are they really making meaningful ecological changes to campus life, ending dirty research practices, and supporting more just relationships with surrounding communities? This project examines how universities (including VCU) narrate their ecological actions (or lack thereof). By examining voluntary, self-reported data from the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS), we investigate the progress and limits of current university sustainability practices. This project is convened by Jesse Goldstein and Kai Bosworth, with student researcher Caroline May.

Climate Circles

Project Directors: Jesse Goldstein and Selma Ait-Bella

Building on the Climate Psychology Association’s “Climate Cafe” project, this team is developing a version of the climate cafe specifically tailored for student-run spaces. Our Climate Circles, which we have been hosting at the Pace Center, offer a calm and safe environment for folks to share stories and process varying emotions such as climate grief, climate anxiety, and other related, hard-to-identify feelings around the climate crisis. Upcoming Climate Circles will be announced here and through the Billion Worlds Lab, as part of their Free School initiative. Students interested in either attending or learning how to facilitate Climate Circles can do so through the Billion Worlds Lab VIP program, and all who are interested in attending or hosting a future Climate Circle (we are happy to train new facilitators or work with your organization/department!) can contact Jesse Goldstein at jgoldstein2@vcu.edu.

Loose Parts

Project Director: Corin Hewitt

This VA Humanities-funded project explores intersections between contemporary art and outdoor adventure play through a series of pop-up adventure play experiences. and community conversations. Three play actions took place in 2023: “The Fountain” with artist Massa Lemu in collaboration with Patrick Henry Elementary, “The Crater” with artist Brandon Ndife in collaboration with the Blue Sky Fund and Richmond Parks, and “Small Fires” in collaboration with artist Umico Niwa, Lois Harrison-Jones Elementary, and Byrd Park. Each of these play actions is carefully designed in collaboration with our community hosts and supervised by trained playworkers who worked with Hewitt as part of his VIP lab, “Being Material.” While the typical adventure playground has four essential components (a vacant lot, “junk” and materials, kids, and adult/teen playworkers), our approach overlays a fifth element: the work of contemporary artists. In our playspaces, children respond to, ignore, deface, build on, or destroy a set of rotating "provocations" created specifically for each play-action. Each of our events provides a space for parents, teachers and the broader community to engage with project team members as well as adventure play experts in facilitated dialog about childhood, creativity and play. If you're interested in this project or the VIP lab, please reach out to Corin Hewitt at chewitt@vcu.edu.

Reparative Land Justice Initiative

Project Directors: Duron Chavis, Meghan Gough, Susan Bodnar-Deren and Jesse Goldstein

This community-driven research focuses on questions around Black Food Sovereignty in Richmond, and community wealth building at minority led urban agriculture sites. 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, this project asks, what grows in Black-led urban agricultural spaces, beyond food? This project includes a growing team of community co-researchers, as well as VCU professors Rohan Kalyan and John Jones. The project begins with storytelling interviews, and will evolve into a broader effort to build a community-values profile and counter-mapping meant to support Black-led urban agriculture spaces and to establish their centrality to both environmental and climate justice infrastructure. Students can work on this project through a VIP lab hosted in the department of Sociology. For inquiries, please contact Meghan Gough at mzgough@vcu.edu.

The John R. Lewis Memorial Lecture Series

In 2022, the Reparative Land Justice Initiative and the HRC helped facilitate the launch of a lecture series honoring the late John R. Lewis. John was a co-founder of Renew Richmond and a central figure supporting black urban agriculture in Richmond and beyond. Led by a community advisory committee, the series will host a leading figure in black urban agriculture for a public lecture and community workshop each year. Our inaugural lecturer was Malik Yakini, who presented “Growing Kale, Shifting Power and Building Food Sovereignty” on February 21, 2023. In May 2024, "Cultivating Space for Freedom: A Look into Black Food Justice" highlighted the work of the Reparative Land Justice Storytelling Project – a community of community researchers; emerging food justice leaders who have come together to listen to and learn from the stories of BIPOC leaders, elders, and farmers in Central Virginia’s Black food sovereignty ecosystem. Inquiries can be directed to Jesse Goldstein at jgoldstein2@vcu.edu.

Materials Index

Project Director: Emily Smith

This project investigates the nature, history and function of materials that shape our lives. The team is working with student researchers on a collaborative and experimental website, and is preparing for new initiatives. The group includes, Jeff Shockley (Business), Kristin Carleton (Interior Design), Corin Hewitt (Sculpture and Extended Media), and Radhika Barua (Mechanical Engineering). Students can contribute to this work via VIP labs in both Sculpture and Sociology. Inquiries can be directed to Emily Smith at smithea8@vcu.edu.