Research News

UB receives SUNY awards for research in arts and humanities

By MICHAEL ANDREI

Published August 13, 2015 This content is archived.

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“The creativity of our faculty continues to make a difference in the education of our students and the lives of members of our community. ”
Venu Govindaraju, interim vice president for research and economic development

UB is among 14 SUNY campuses awarded $160,000 for projects supported by the SUNY Arts and Humanities (AAH) Network of Excellence, which fosters student and faculty research by encouraging collaboration and engagement among SUNY campuses in responding to critical social issues.

UB’s six collaborations with other SUNY campuses include projects that will work to improve health and disability services to people living after traumatic injuries and with chronic illnesses; rethink systems, experiences and aesthetics of sustainable living; digitally document local history; and explore how body-based arts experiences can positively impact conflict resolution.

“The creativity of our faculty continues to make a difference in the education of our students and the lives of members of our community,” says Venu Govindaraju, interim vice president for research and economic development. “Our faculty’s participation in projects focusing on how the arts and humanities better our understanding of the world will bring together UB’s creative energy to address social issues and will contribute to the cultural fabric of our community.”

A detailed abstract for each of UB’s six AAH Network of Excellence awards is available online and includes:

  • $20,000 to build on existing scholarship that brings together neighborhood groups, libraries and professional historians to produce history about the East Side of Buffalo. Jeffrey Kujawa, assistant director and research associate for UB's Center for Urban Studies, is principal investigator. Co-principal investigators are Henry Louis Taylor Jr., Center for Urban Studies; Daniel M. DiLandro, SUNY Buffalo State; Anne Conable, Buffalo & Erie County Public Library; Casmiro Rodriguez Sr., Hispanic Heritage Council of Western New York; Michael Frisch, Randforce Associates and retired UB faculty member; and David Greenman, King Urban Life Center.
  • $20,000 to investigate how engagement in body-based arts experiences can impact conflict resolution and people-to-people diplomacy encouraging interaction and understanding between hostile communities. The team’s hypothesis is that social practice dance experiences have the capacity to disrupt the norm and provide positive and immediate results for areas of conflict, and inspire future work by local artists and long-term outcomes. PI is Nelly Van-Bommel, SUNY Purchase; co-PIs are Anne Burnidge, UB Department of Theatre and Dance; Christine Merrilees, SUNY Geneseo; Steven Lam, SUNY Purchase; Andrew Fitz-Gibbon, SUNY Cortland; and Karl Rogers, SUNY Brockport.
  • $20,000 to explore using architecture to transform abandoned brick buildings by transposing a Moroccan-style riad courtyard upon the buildings. The project will include developing service-learning courses that use digital-fabrication tools and skills exchange in the architectural design process. In addition, the work is designed to instill a dialogue around race relations, immigration and the relationship between the U.S. and Islamic culture. PI is Christopher Robbins, SUNY Purchase; co-PIs are Omar Khan, Nicholas Bruscia and Jordan Geiger, UB Department of Architecture; Michael Gayk and Matthew Friday, SUNY New Paltz; and Raphael Zollinger, SUNY Purchase.
  • $20,000 to establish the Town of New Paltz as a case study for collaboratively rethinking and redesigning innovative systems, experiences and the aesthetics of sustainable living to achieve carbon neutrality and sustainability by 2025. PI is Andrea Frank, SUNY New Paltz; co-PIs are Joyce Hwang, UB Department of Architecture; Emily Puthoff, SUNY New Paltz; and Jeffrey Freedman, University at Albany.
  • $10,619 to build interdisciplinary approaches through a multi-campus collaboration aimed at providing students and scholars with a more complex view of Chinese thinking about the global order during the 1915-45  interwar period. PI is Tze-Ki Hon, SUNY Geneseo; co-PIs are Kristin Stapleton, UB Department of History, and Xin Fan, SUNY Fredonia.
  • $15,000 to examine how technological innovation impacts the lives of patients and people with disabilities as well as those living with traumatic injury and chronic illness. PI is James Bono, UB associate professor of history and medicine; co-PIs are UB faculty members Rachel Ablow, English; Ana Mariella Bacigalupo, Anthropology; Ann Bisantz, Industrial and Systems Engineering; Kim Griswold, Family Medicine; Graham Hammill, English; Fred Klaits, Anthropology; Victor Paquet, Industrial and Systems Engineering; and Linda Pessar-Cowan, Psychiatry.

SUNY Arts and Humanities is one of six SUNY Networks of Excellence. Each network assembles scientists, scholars and external partners from SUNY campuses to conduct collaborative research in high-demand areas. The others are SUNY Health, SUNY Brain, SUNY 4E (Energy, Environment, Economics and Education), SUNY Materials and Advanced Manufacturing, and SUNY Teaching, Learning and Assessment.