Dr. Odessa Gonzalez Benson
From the Annual Report: Establishing and fostering long-term relationships with academic partners allows the Ginsberg Center to support them along a number of different pathways—including those that directly impact the work of community organizing and activism. Our relationship with Dr. Odessa Gonzalez Benson, Assistant Professor at the U-M School of Social Work and a member of the U-M Detroit School of Urban Studies Faculty Cluster, is one such example.
In recent years, Gonzalez Benson’s wide-ranging work has included aspects of advocacy, philanthropy, and immigrant welfare. In 2018, she received a Ginsberg Faculty Community-Engagement Grant to advance her research and direct work with grassroots organizations that support Grand Rapids’ substantial immigrant and refugee community. (Michigan’s second most populous city is home to about 8,000 immigrants). Gonzalez Benson’s team worked with the organizations to help them build capacity and also conducted a study to better understand how they leverage opportunities and connect with each other.
As a result of this partnership, Gonzalez Benson’s collaboration with the Ginsberg Center has become even more robust in the past few years and now includes course consultation, research consultation, and the incorporation of Ginsberg student workshops in coursework. Gonzalez Benson says her team has also applied Ginsberg’s community engagement principles to their connections with dozens of immigrant and refugee-run community organizations, as well as resettlement agencies such as Samaritas and public entities like the US Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Neeraja Aravamudan, Ginsberg’s Interim Co-Director, notes that this relationship has allowed for a deepened, more sustainable impact on the grassroots refugee and immigrant organizations.
“Dr. Gonzalez Benson offers a great example of community-engaged scholarship that is integrated into both teaching and research in an ongoing way,” Aravamudan says. “Our work ultimately aims to build longterm partnerships and she is really committed to that approach, as well.”
Kick-started with a Ginsberg Faculty Community-Engagement Grant, the research initiative continues to grow thanks, in part, to Ginsberg’s ongoing grant consultation. Building off the Center’s initial support, Gonzalez Benson’s team has since been awarded a $60,000 grant from the Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research, as well as additional funds from the Detroit Urban Research Center, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender and others. Four publications have been produced from the research initiative, with two more currently under review, and the team has presented their work globally on several occasions.
“One-on-one consultations with Ginsberg staff have been so helpful,” Gonzalez Benson says. “The Center’s support was crucial as I started at U-M for setting into motion my research, and my community-engaged work has only deepened since then.”
Read more from our Annual Report here.
