This year, the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR), in conjunction with the National Center for Institutional Diversity’s Anti-Racism Collaborative, has awarded nearly $500,000 in grants to eight research teams collecting data and advancing knowledge in areas related to anti-racism. Three of these grants were awarded to ASC faculty members! The grants are designed to support multidisciplinary teams of faculty from 13 U-M schools and colleges, as well as collaborators from universities across the globe, to more deeply understand racism and to develop ways to remediate its effects.
Below is a summary of the three anti-racism research projects developed by our esteemed ASC faculty:
Exploring the Social and Economic Value of Data in Africa
Team leads: Yousif Hassan (Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy), Erika Kraemer Mbula and Mpho Primus (University of Johannesburg) and Mamadou Camara (University of Dakar)
This team will explore how AI innovations and the data economy could be reimagined to center social justice and address racial and economic inequalities in African societies. They will develop a data evaluation framework that enables marginalized communities to benefit from the fair distribution of the benefits of AI innovation and the global data economy.
Ubuntu-AI: Empowering Design Collaborations Across the Black Atlantic with Artificial Intelligence
Team leads: Audrey Bennett (Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design), Ron Eglash and Micheal Nayebare (School of Information), Kwame Robinson (Wayne State University) and Andrew Hunn (U-M Information and Technology Services)
Researchers will investigate how AI might reverse its potentially debilitating impact on Black artisans by combining the insights from two projects. One project examines how Black artisans in Detroit might use digital fabrication and related technologies for economic empowerment, while the other focuses on developing a platform for exploring how African artists and designers might use AI.
Professor Eglash explains, “Most AI companies just grab whatever they can find online and treat it as training data. That puts artists and designers everywhere, especially in developing economies, in a precarious position. If you demand they do not use your images or data, then search engines (which are increasingly based on AI) will claim you do not exist. If you capitulate and give away your data, AI can now replicate your images and styles, without your involvement. We call that the ‘AI double bind.’”
Ubuntu-AI works to prevent AI companies from grabbing artisanal labor and design and using it as training data. Instead, Ubuntu-AI puts the African artisans in control of the platform, letting them choose how to license images and exploring how they want to see AI play a role in their process.
Racial Capitalism and Anti-Racism in Kenyan Conservation
Team leads: Bilal Butt (School for Environment and Sustainability), Omolade Adunbi (LSA and Law School) and Muzammil Hussain (LSA)
This project aims to identify how and why racialized conservation injustice occurs and how it can be prevented in the future; researchers will integrate interdisciplinary theories, mixed methods, and multiple lines of evidence to inform organizations working on conservation, justice, and human rights. In particular, the project focuses on two research questions:
What are the tactics and mechanisms that have created and expanded a racialized conservation landscape?
What strategies can be deployed to achieve racial justice in conservation?
Professor Butt explains that partnerships with local Kenyan institutions are integral to the project. He says, “By partnering with Kenyan NGOs who are actively working in this space, we want to explore initiatives such as Indigenous landback movements as potential abolitionist approaches to conservation.”
