February 2025

It was somewhere between reading Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (Senior Year of High School) and Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1st year of college) when I realized that I was interested in the body, the everyday, corporeal experiences of people as the navigate the unrelenting shadow of modernity and racial capital. I was drawn to Hurston’s poetic and haunting descriptions of Black life in Eatonville, Florida, and I couldn’t turn away from Fanon’s harrowing account of the impact of colonialism on the men, women, and the “soul” of Martinique. In both texts, the Black body, beautiful yet tormented and seeking places of respite and care, were the main characters.

With my research, I am trying to identify and archive the spaces were Black bodies have experienced safety and freedom.  Specifically, I want to identify the characteristics, lexicon/vocabulary, and philosophies of these spaces and how they can be applied to existing institutions and communities.  Black bodies in the United States, according to most current research, experience high degrees of discomfort and relative unease, and this embodied dissatisfaction is evident in health outcomes, physical and psychological, as well as relationships with dominant institutions, like governmental or judicial systems.

My research makes visible, via oral histories, historic markers, and historical narratives, the genealogies and stories of these safe spaces and practices. Moreover, my most recent work functions to measure and index the impact of this lack of access to safe spaces. Black organizations also can use these indexes and stories to begin the process of imagining and designing safe spaces for Black communities or any community that has a history of persistent marginalization.  Moreover, it has given Black and brown communities in Indianapolis the opportunity to identify harm and begin the process of repair through co-creating research methods alongside me and my collaborators.  If nothing else, my research has helped communities identify themselves as researchers and interventionists who can collect data, apply analytical tools, and imagine just futures.

My favorite part of research is meeting people and learning something that I didn’t know. It is the surprise and the unexpected that makes research both rich and quite rewarding for me. Ultimately, I see research as the ability to not solve a problem but to better identify or respond to it. As a result, team-based, community-embedded research produces richer and more compelling conclusions every single time.

When I am not researching, I love the work and satisfaction that comes from being in intimate relationships with my family and friends. One of my deepest and uncompromising vocations is that of a father and a friend. I love crafting a note to a loved one, returning phone calls on a weekend morning, holding vigil in the midst of upheaval, or planning a celebration in response to some great victory. I don’t make friends easily, but I am dogged and unwavering in my commitment to the circle of people who make me and my spaces safe. I can think of no higher call than to be with and for someone that you love.

Students are involved in my research as researchers and collaborators. As a person committed to team-based and community-embedded research, I am well aware that we are all students. I invite students in as researchers, learners, and reviewers of this work. I am currently working with students who are helping to design the public-facing aspects of the Phyllis Wheatley and working to brainstorm next steps or new methods for this project.

Community members, like students, are researchers and collaborators. I engage them as experts, and I make time in my research protocol to ensure that their insights and ideas are not only heard but also vetted and incorporated.  Specifically, I am committed to working with my community partners to think about dissemination of research results and next phases of the project. In my mind, the community is one aspect of research peer-review that can attest to the success or failure of the project and can provide you with ideas and resources to move this work forward in ways that will positively impact the community.

My next step is to listen and to listen more intently.  I am asking my community collaborators to help me identify the deficits or missing aspects of our current research projects and to dream big with me about new opportunities and greater impact.  I am working on a series of articles co-written with community collaborators that document this community-engaged method and the future of our work together.