2023 Seed Grant Awardees Abstracts

Bevin Hardy

Department of Anthropology

Climate change continues to threaten coastal communities making them vulnerable to structural changes. Ocracoke, North Carolina is a small island community that rebuilt after Hurricane Dorian in 2019. Their economy was supported by the influx of tourism during the pandemic; however, the effects of these events contributed to a shortage in affordable housing and seasonal laborers. These pressures threaten to alter the cultural economies and structure of the community. Cultural economy is an analytical framework that examines how economies are embedded in and constructed by cultural systems. This research intends to identify the importance of the cultural economies on Ocracoke, through participatory ethnographic methodologies, specifically using participant observation, the sticky note method, and the participatory mapping method. The findings from this summer will help explain the potential shifts in Ocracoke if these environmental and economic pressures persist and will lay the foundation for community-based participatory research (CBPR) in future work in this community. The long-term goal of this research is to execute CBPR focused on the environmental, economic, and health pressures impacting the present and threatening the future of the community on Ocracoke.

Charlotte Robbins

Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering

This project will document environmental injustices experienced by immigrant farmworkers through oral history. Farmworkers in North Carolina are essential workers, yet they face a myriad of environmental exposures that can lead to poor health, including extreme heat, pesticides, lack of sanitation facilities, and poor housing. This project will document these experiences of environmental injustice to understand how injustices are weaved through individual farmworkers’ life histories and have resulted in negative health outcomes. This oral history project is part of an ongoing collaboration between UNC’s Environmental Justice Action Clinic and NC FIELD, a community-based organization that provides health and social services to farmworkers, primarily in Duplin County. Formal documentation of these experiences of environmental injustice will support NC FIELD’s policymaking and funding efforts, as well as their educational programming for community health workers, farmworkers, and other impacted community members. The GCRP seed grant will support costs associated with oral histories, including participant incentives to promote equitable participation. Additionally, this seed grant will help us share our analysis with impacted community members through a community forum.

Preethi Saravanan

Department of Anthropology

This project will archive oral histories from queer activists in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. I will work in partnership with Nirangal, a grass-roots organization that provides community aid to various marginalized populations, primarily sexual orientation/gender identity (SOGI) minorities and sex workers, but also populations vulnerable via caste and socioeconomic status. This archive will broaden perceptions surrounding South India and its contributions to the larger cultural landscape, political structures, and social movements; particularly the queer and caste-abolitionist movements in South India. This project is situated within a broader collaborative effort to understand the processes of cultural crystallization, evolution, and assimilation in the Indian diaspora and its role in creating a unique burden of disease of this population. The GCPR Seed Grant Award will support community-forward research and network-building with local activists that are essential to amplifying voices of marginalized Tamil communities within India, the field of Anthropology, and broader academic and public conversation.

Sayoko Kawabata

Department of Health Sciences

This study will take place in Fairview, a historically Black neighborhood in Hillsborough, NC which has become a multi-ethnic community with immigrant families moving into affordable housing. Over 30 years, the Fairview Community Watch (FCW), a resident led community watch group has been conducting many community initiatives and advocacy efforts to obtain better living conditions and a safer environment. They are a vibrant community that treasures play and playfulness throughout their everyday lives, community events, and programs. However, through working with this community to develop their community center and conducting oral histories, I learned there are still hopes and concerns for more opportunities for their children. During the grant period, I will take an ethnographic approach to explore opportunities and choices of play in the community with the FCW. I will start by building a steering committee with members of the FCW to define the research question and build a plan to involve children as participants in the process to understand the realities and needs of children in this community.

Deborah Baron

Department of Health Behavior 

In South Africa (SA), the epicenter of the global AIDS pandemic, nearly 25% of new HIV infections occur in young women ages 15-24. In addition to unprotected sex, infidelity and violence within gender-inequitable intimate partnerships, and structural barriers to health services, young SA women commonly suffer adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). These childhood traumas are positively linked to HIV risk behaviors and co-occur in youth creating life trajectories of cumulative risk exposures. Amidst these challenges, young women remain resilient. I am working with young SA women in rural Mpumalanga who have faced trauma and youth activists to conduct a Photovoice project. This study aims to deepen our understanding of the context of young women’s lives and how resilience may help them to stay HIV-negative in the face of multiple adversities. Utilizing a strengths-based framework and feminist epistemologies, we (participants, field workers and myself) are jointly producing narratives to amplify the voices of ACE-exposed SA women and their lived experiences as they seek to navigate and negotiate sexual reproductive health services and healthy relationships. This project supports convening a Photovoice Community Forum—the critical and final phase where we will share results and discuss community priorities with a look towards next steps.