UB Presidential Fellow András Blazsek on Project Team Awarded 2024 ACLS Digital Justice Seed Grant

The University at Buffalo is proud to announce that UB Presidential Fellow and Teaching Fellow, András Blazsek, a doctoral student in the Department of Media Study, is part of a project team that has been awarded a 2024 ACLS Digital Justice Seed Grant. Project team members also include City University of New York (CUNY) professors Emily Verla Bovino (Project Lead, Performing and Fine Arts, CUNY York College) and Dawn Roberts-Semple (Co-Investigator, Earth and Physical Sciences, CUNY York College) as well as esteemed community organizer and environmental educator Barbara Brown (Chairperson, Eastern Queens Alliance, Inc.). The project will include community participation through Eastern Queens Alliance, Inc. (EQA), a federation of civic associations advocating for a sustainable Southeast Queens. EQA operates the Idlewild Environmental Center located at 222-02 149th Avenue in Springfield Gardens, Queens. The creation of the center and the restoration of Idlewild Park Preserve are its major initiatives.

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Digital Justice Grants Program supports digital projects across the humanities and interpretative social sciences that critically engage with the interests and histories of people of color and other historically marginalized communities through the ethical use of digital tools and methods. The program is made possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.

The project team will receive approximately $25,000 to work on 'Sounding Data Justice for Environmental Liberation in Southeast Queens', one of ten start-up projects awarded. It initiates university-based, transdisciplinary support for a community-run digital justice initiative in data literacy, data ethics and environmental awareness.

In response to EQA's interest in art-science initiatives, the project transforms data into sound to develop new ways of sharing the air quality and aircraft noise data collected by EQA. In workshops and listening sessions with community members, the project translates extrapolated values into sound and images to explore correlations between measurements. The aim is to grow data literacy and foster environmental equity through liberation science and ecological art. Interested in learning more about the project? Please e-mail ebovino@york.cuny.edu