The Center for Urban and Regional Affairs is excited to announce that CURA’s Senior Research Associate Dr. Brittany Lewis has been named the 2024 President's Community-Engaged Scholar.
The University of Minnesota President's Community-Engaged Scholar Award recognizes one faculty or P&A researcher annually for exemplary engaged scholarship. The award recipients have demonstrated a longstanding academic career that embodies the University of Minnesota’s definition of public engagement. The President's Community-Engaged Scholar Award is the highest recognition for community-engaged scholarship at the University of Minnesota.
“During her time at the University and CURA, Dr. Brittany Lewis has established herself as one of the most prominent community-engaged scholars on racial equity in this region. In a relatively short period, she has built a remarkable record of community-based research that has had a significant policy impact on local governments and philanthropic organizations,” said CURA Director Edward Goetz.
Dr. Lewis’ research interests focus on issues of racial and gender equity. She utilizes mixed-method social science approaches to investigate equity across a number of issue domains, including housing and housing policy, social service provision, neighborhood change, the criminal justice system, and economic development.
“Authentic community-engaged scholarship is about a willingness to be implicated in the change we seek in the world as well as a commitment to model what it looks like to relinquish power to community. I would like to thank the hundreds of Black and brown families that have entrusted to me their stories of displacement, physical and economic violence, and social and political marginalization. Together, in solidarity, we will achieve urban justice,” said Dr. Lewis.
A sampling of Dr. Brittany Lewis’ CURA research
- ‘Families for Finance,’ A Financial Empowerment Program for Shelter Guests: An Evaluation of Program Design and Pilot Program Execution
- Brooklyn Center Housing Report: Livability, affordability, accessibility, and safety
- Searching for Stability: Futility, choice, and access in the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority’s Housing Choice Voucher Program
- The Brooklyn Park Housing Project
- Minneapolis Rent Stabilization Study
- The Illusion of Choice: Evictions and Profit in North Minneapolis
- The Diversity of Gentrification: Multiple Forms of Gentrification in Minneapolis and St. Paul
Edward Goetz
Edward G. Goetz is director of CURA and a faculty member at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.
Ed specializes in housing and local community development planning and policy. His research focuses on issues of race and poverty and how they affect housing policy planning and development. Before coming to the University of Minnesota in 1988, he worked at the mayor's Office of Housing and Economic Development in San Francisco and for several nonprofit community developers in Los Angeles and San Francisco. He has served on the board of directors of nonprofit housing agencies in the Twin Cities, and on several regional commissions related to affordable housing and development.
He is the author of The One-Way Street of Integration: Fair Housing and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in American Cities (Cornell University Press, 2018), New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice, and Public Housing Policy (Cornell University Press, 2013), Clearing the Way: Deconcentrating the Poor in Urban America (2003, Urban Institute Press), Shelter Burden: Local Politics and Progressive Housing Policy (1993, Temple University Press), and co-editor of The New Localism: Comparative Urban Politics in a Global Era (1993, Sage Publications).
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