This story was originally published by the Faculty of Environment.
The Government of Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) recently announced the funding recipients of their Insight Grants and Insight Development Grants which included SERS faculty member Marta Berbés, who was awarded an Insight Development Grant valued at $75,000. Insight Development Grants support research in its initial stages and the grants enable the development of new research questions, as well as experimentation with new methods, theoretical approaches and/or ideas for up to two years. Congratulations Marta!
Marta's project is titled Looking 'Blackward' to the Future: Reclaiming the place of African American communities in Phoenix, AZ.
The Blackward to the Future project is a community-led, participatory action research initiative to reclaim the past, present, and future of the African American community in Phoenix, Arizona. The project responds to the erasure of Black histories from the urban and cultural landscape of Phoenix, a city where dominant narratives often depict African Americans as newcomers and where archival materials documenting African American experiences constitute only 1% of historical records. By engaging community youth and elders in an intergenerational dialogue, the project aims to counteract these omissions, creating a space where Black voices are centered in developing a social memory and co-producing future urban visions. Drawing on the Adinkra concept of sankofa—the principle that looking to the past is essential for moving forward—the project takes a justice-oriented approach that combines historical documentation with future visioning and documentary film-making. Importantly, the project shifts away from damage-centered narratives. Instead, the Blackward to the Future projects explicitly foregrounds joy, resistance, and self-determination in understanding Black life in Phoenix.