MARCA
Research
Current Projects:
Assisi Systemic Change Applied Research Fellowship: MARCA is pleased to announce the Systemic Change Applied Research Fellowship. Through
a partnership between the Assisi Foundation of Memphis and the University of Memphis,
the fellowship offers 3 students an interdisciplinary opportunity to bridge research,
philanthropy, and community action. In this inaugural year, Sylvia Akotia, MA student
in City and Regional Planning, Virginia Lewis, MA in Sociology, and Maame Agyeiwaa
Agyei, doctoral student in Communication Studies, are collaborating with Habitat for
Humanity to conduct community-guided research on the influence of housing conditions,
policies, and neighborhood environment on the well-being, stability, and lived experiences
of older adults aging in place in Memphis and Shelby County. The fellowship research
is being supervised by Dr. JoAnna Boudreaux in the Sociology Department and supported
by Emily Thomson, MARCA-CUR fellow.
Sylvia Akotia
Maame Agyeiwaa Agyei
Virginia Lewis
Faculty led-community involved projects:
Living the River, led by Dr. Arleen Hill (Earth Sciences), is a year-long curricular effort to explore
the legacies of the 1927 flooding of the Mississippi River - how Memphis lives with
the river today, what we have learned from the past, and what risks we still face. Collaborating
faculty include Dr. Andrew Guthrie (City and Regional Planning), Dr. Donal Harris
(English), and Katherine Lambert-Pennington (Anthropology/SUAPP).
State of Memphis Housing, led by Dr. Katherine Lambert-Pennington (SUAPP), is a collaboration with Innovate
Memphis to examine the local policy, economic, social, and bureaucratic dynamics that
shape the housing ecosystem in Memphis. Findings will be shared at the fall 2026 Housing
Summit sponsored by the City of Memphis’ Division of Housing and Community Development. Collaborating
faculty include Drs. Courtnee Melton-Fant and Andrew Guthrie (City and Regional Planning),
along with Urban Affairs graduate student researchers, Quinn Houlihan and Stephen Mensah.
The Federalism Lab: The Politics of Local Government collects data on local, state, and national government collaboration, cooperation, and, at times, opposition. The powers of local governments in the United States are designated in state constitutions, even in more autonomous "home rule" states. Our research in The Federalism Lab centers on the mechanisms for preemption, what makes a state preempt, or overrule, local policy action. Data collection efforts include roll-call votes of the Tennessee General Assembly and agenda items from the Memphis City Council and Shelby County. For more information, contact Dr. Brooke Shannon.
MAPP Memphis: Measuring Assets, People, and Places, is a pilot project examining how the boundaries used to define neighborhoods shape inequality by comparing administrative borders with resident-defined geographies in Soulsville, a historically Black neighborhood in Memphis. Urban policies and planning frameworks often rely on arbitrary units such as zip codes and census tracts that misrepresent local needs and resilience, a form of spatial bias known as the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP). Through a mixed-methods design combining Participatory GIS (PGIS) and Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), the project trains Soulsville youth as co-researchers to map neighborhood boundaries, document residents' oral histories, and integrate these data into the Memphis 3.0 comprehensive planning framework. This resident-authored spatial dataset will quantify how administrative misalignments distort measures of opportunity and belonging while revealing mechanisms of resilience and community identity that conventional data overlook. In doing so, the project reframes spatial definition itself as a mechanism of inequality and demonstrates a scalable, participatory model for more equitable and community-informed urban planning. For more information, contact Dr. Brenda Mathias.