Undergraduate Research & Scholarships

Kyla Whitmore (2021)

Profile image of Kyla Whitmore (2021)

Cob On Wood is a commons space located on the land underneath the I-880, in West Oakland. Cob On Wood challenges the current urban condition through a bottom-up approach to transforming urban space, based on the practices of mutual aid and collective action. The project seeks to provide new possibilities for unhoused and curbside community residents along Wood Street in West Oakland and serve as a model for a site-specific intervention that questions how common resources and community resilience can be generated and maintained. It is a collective made up […]

Michael Papias (2021)

In Michael’s senior year at Cal, he conducted an Ethnic Studies senior honors thesis that gained the support of the Ronald E. McNair and Robert and Colleen Haas Scholars programs. His project explored the impact the child welfare system has on Latina/x/o cultural and family identity development. Michael’s research data highlighted an internal struggle of culture and family identity development amongst Latina/x/o foster youth. However, his data also suggested that Latina/x/o foster youth have developed their own set of tools to (1) avoid disclosing their foster youth status, (2) subvert […]

Katherine Chen & Henry DeMarco (2021)

On ancient maps, terrae incognitae referred to regions beyond the bounds of the geographically known, often labelled with images of monsters or other imagined dangers. Berkeley’s homeless encampments, we contend, are popularly regarded as terrae incognitae, despite representing colloquially known neighborhoods that are populated by people with their own narratives, attachments to place, and cartographic knowledge. These encampments are often perceived to be mysterious spaces, and are absent from cartographic representation, making them targets for speculated meanings. Encampments like Seabreeze and People’s Park receive little municipal recognition and are conspicuously […]

Sukhmony Brar (2021)

UNEARTHED is an oral history and community education project that documents, amplifies, and creates community around the diverse narratives of Punjabi immigrant women working in food processing plants across California’s Central Valley. Since the early 1900s, California has been home to a large number of Punjabi immigrants. Today, Punjabi is the third most spoken language in several Central Valley counties and the Punjabi community likely constitutes the second-largest immigrant labor force in the Central Valley agricultural sector; however, the stories of these Punjabi laborers, specifically the stories of Punjabi women […]