Ford School assistant professor Yousif Hassan has been chosen for a University of Michigan research grant for his work that explores how AI innovations and data can center social justice and address racial and economic inequalities in African societies. Hassan is leading a team that includes researchers from the University of Johannesburg and the University of Dakar to develop a data evaluation framework that enables marginalized communities to benefit from the fair distribution of the benefits of AI and the global data economy.
The Office of the Vice President for Research has awarded nearly $500,000 in grants across eight research teams collecting data and advancing knowledge in areas related to anti-racism.
The research topics being funded include peripartum health care equality, uneven disciplinary actions in early childhood education, and the disproportionate negative effect of artificial intelligence on Black artists.
OVPR’s Research Catalyst and Innovation Program supports research and scholarship that addresses complex societal racial inequalities to inform systemic action that achieves equity and justice. Since the program’s inception in 2021, OVPR has awarded $1.9 million in anti-racism grants to four cohorts of researchers from across the University of Michigan.
“The work these teams are pursuing is key in understanding how to dismantle the effects of systemic inequalities across multiple communities. The interdisciplinary nature of these projects allows researchers to work on complicated, multifaceted issues that require innovative solutions,” said Trachette Jackson, University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor, professor of mathematics in LSA and associate vice president for research-DEI initiatives.
The OVPR grants are jointly administered and advanced in partnership with the National Center for Institutional Diversity’s Anti-Racism Collaborative, which aims to support and amplify the work of anti-racism scholars at U-M.
“The NCID is thrilled to help support the scholarship of these researchers as they collaborate across the university to more deeply understand racism and to develop ways to remediate its effects. These projects are certain to have a wide and impactful reach,” said Elizabeth R. Cole, NCID director, University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor, and professor of psychology, of women’s and gender studies, and of Afroamerican and African Studies in LSA.
The grants will support multidisciplinary teams of faculty from 13 U-M schools and colleges, as well as collaborators from universities like Portland State University, the University of Johannesburg and Michigan State University.
“The specific topics of and approaches to these projects are diverse, extremely relevant and previously not well studied. They reflect the global issues that our society is facing and must diligently pursue solutions to,” said Geoffrey Thün, associate vice president for research-social sciences, humanities and the arts, who oversees the program.
Below is a summary of the eight selected OVPR anti-racism research projects:
Potawatomi Education in the Great Lakes Region
Team leads: Kyle Whyte and Mary Beth Jager (School for Environment and Sustainability)
Goal: This project aims to foster a collaboration that will launch an anti-racist education program for Indigenous peoples in the Great Lakes region, with a specific focus on people of the Potawatomi diaspora. The funding will support a research approach that combines a structured communication technique with an Indigenous talking circle research methodology.
Constructing Exclusion: A Discourse Analysis of Arguments Justifying Preschool Suspension and Expulsion
Team leads: Erin Elizabeth Flynn (Marsal Family School of Education) and Dalia Avello-Vega (Portland State University)
Goals: This study will utilize discourse analysis to investigate the disproportionate suspension and expulsion of Black children and children with disabilities from early learning opportunities. The researchers will aim to equip advocates and policymakers on how best to advance structural solutions to an early-emerging racial equity issue with longstanding academic, social and economic consequences.
Exploring the Social and Economic Value of Data in Africa
Team leads: Yousif Hassan (Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy), Erika Kraemer Mbula and Mpho Primus (University of Johannesburg) and Mamadou Camara (University of Dakar)
Goals: This team will explore how AI innovations and the data economy could be reimagined to center social justice and address racial and economic inequalities in African societies. They will develop a data evaluation framework that enables marginalized communities to benefit from the fair distribution of the benefits of AI innovation and the global data economy.
Ubuntu-AI: Empowering Design Collaborations Across the Black Atlantic with Artificial Intelligence
Team leads: Audrey Bennett (Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design), Ron Eglash and Micheal Nayebare (School of Information), Kwame Robinson (Wayne State University) and Andrew Hunn (U-M Information and Technology Services)
Goals: Researchers will investigate how AI might reverse its potentially debilitating impact on Black artisans by combining the insights from two projects. One project examines how Black artisans in Detroit might use digital fabrication and related technologies for economic empowerment, while the other focuses on developing a platform for exploring how African artists and designers might use AI.
Centering Women’s Voices for an Intervention with Health Care Providers: Reducing Disparities during the Peripartum Period
Team leads: Cecilia Martinez-Torteya, Maria Muzik and Angela Johnson (Medical School), and Alytia Levendosky (Michigan State University)
Goals: In partnership with the Michigan Clinical Consultation and Care Program and a community advisory board of peripartum women and health care providers, researchers will develop a perinatal health care provider intervention that reduces medical discrimination and enhances provider-patient interactions.
Ways of Knowing and Storytelling as Diversity Training Mechanisms
Team leads: Marie Waung, Shareia Carter and Rima Berry-Hung (Office of Holistic Excellence, UM-Dearborn), Terri Laws and Anna Muller (College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters, UM-Dearborn), Lisa Martin (College of Education, Health, and Human Services, UM-Dearborn) and Amanda Esquivel (College of Engineering and Computer Science, UM-Dearborn)
Goals: To inform social attitudes and responses to diversity in students, faculty and staff on the UM-Dearborn campus, this project will examine the effectiveness of “ways of knowing” and storytelling interventions on diversity training activities.
FARWell: The Formula for Anti-Racist Wellness and Therapy
Team leads: Addie Weaver and Joseph Himle (School of Social Work), Donte Boyd (The Ohio State University), and Michael Henry and Hedieh Briggs (Washtenaw County My Brother’s Keeper)
Goals: Through a community-university partnership between My Brother’s Keeper, Formula 734, and social work researchers at U-M and The Ohio State University, this project will support the development and evaluation of a transdiagnostic cognitive behavioral therapy for depression and anxiety, designed for and by young Black men.
Racial Capitalism and Anti-Racism in Kenyan Conservation
Team leads: Bilal Butt (School for Environment and Sustainability), Omolade Adunbi (LSA and Law School) and Muzammil Hussain (LSA)
Goals: To identify how and why racialized conservation injustice occurs and how it can be prevented in the future, researchers will integrate interdisciplinary theories, mixed methods and multiple lines of evidence to inform organizations working on conservation, justice and human rights.
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Excerpts by Kelsey Keeves, Office of the Vice President for Research
