Charisma Acey named Arcus Chair in Social Justice and the Built Environment
The five-year appointment recognizes and supports Acey’s work in environmental justice, both locally in the East Bay and in African cities
Charisma Acey, associate professor in the Department of City & Regional Planning and research director of the Institute of Urban & Regional Development, has been appointed to the Arcus Chair in Social Justice and the Built Environment for a five-year term. As Arcus Chair, Acey receives a scholarly allowance and funds to support her graduate students.
The Arcus Chair was established in 2011 with an endowment from Jon L. Stryker (MArch 1989) combined with matching funds from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The chair is named for the Arcus Foundation, a private philanthropic organization Stryker founded to advance social justice and conservation internationally.
Acey, who joined Berkeley’s faculty in 2013, focuses on environmental sustainability, with a focus on poverty reduction, urban governance, environmental justice, food justice, and access to basic services. Her work, in the Bay Area and in Africa, employs both quantitative and qualitative, community-based research approaches.
“This appointment means the world to me,” says Acey. “It is very difficult to secure steady sources of funding for either community-engaged action research or projects in Africa.”
Arcus Chair funding will help support Acey’s work in Lagos, Nigeria, and other cities in African countries where communities are fighting for basic human rights like clean water and modern sanitation.
Closer to home, the allowance will also enable Acey to add a storytelling piece to the Bay Area Air Quality Map Analysis Project. This digital tool, a collaboration among researchers across CED, visualizes and analyzes Bay Area environmental quality.
“For decades, Oakland communities have been fighting for clean air, and getting some wins, but that work has not been recognized,” Acey explains. “Now we can add that important historical narrative to the project.”
“Professor Acey’s scholarship and teaching represent an extremely important perspective within the Department of City & Regional Planning,” says Department Chair Dan Chatman. “Her work on infrastructure in developing countries, on access to food, and on community participation processes plays an important role in shaping cutting-edge planning scholarship and practice.”
Arcus Chair funds will help strengthen the college’s ability to train students to work with communities, under the aegis of the Dellums Clinic for Dismantling Structural Racism in Public Policy, Planning, and Design. The clinic is a project Acey helped bring to life with IURD researcher Margaretta Lin in honor of former Oakland Mayor and United States Congressman Ron Dellums. The clinic places graduate students in the field under the mentorship of experienced professionals to work on community planning and public policy design through the framework of racial equity analysis. Current Dellums Clinic projects include a housing equity roadmap for Richmond, California; a Green New Deal plan for the City of Berkeley; and housing, climate safety, environmental justice, land use and transportation elements for the City of Oakland’s General Plan.
Acey also plans to allocate Arcus Chair funds toward stipends for her doctoral students, who all focus on social equity. Stipends can support research travel, participation in academic conferences, and the acquisition of advanced discipline-specific tools such as mapping software.