Announcing Our 2025 Early Stage Urban Research Award Recipients
The Boston University Initiative on Cities (IOC) is pleased to announce the 2025 recipients of our 11th request for proposals for the Early Stage Urban Research Awards. These seed grants support early-stage academic research focused on urban challenges and urban populations across various disciplines and scopes. These projects also serve as mentorship opportunities for graduate […]
IOC Director Loretta Lees to Receive 2025 Urban Affairs Association “Contribution to the Field of Urban Affairs Award”
The Boston University Initiative on Cities is excited to announce that Director Loretta Lees will receive the 2025 Contribution to the Field of Urban Affairs Award from the Urban Affairs Association (UAA). Director Lees will formally accept this award at the upcoming International Conference on Urban Affairs in Vancouver, BC, Canada. In addition to her […]
Housing and Neighborhood Determinants of Sleep and Mental Health in Low-Income Toddlers and their Parents
Principal Investigators: Co-Principal Investigators: The goal of this project is to understand the contributions of poverty-related disparities in neighborhood and housing to sleep and mental health problems in early childhood. We will leverage data from an ongoing randomized controlled trial, the Parent and Toddler Health (PATH) project, which focuses on low-income families in the Boston […]
Introducing Our 2024 Early Stage Urban Research Award Recipients
The Boston University Initiative on Cities (IOC) is pleased to announce the 2024 recipients of our 10th request for proposals for the Early Stage Urban Research Awards. These seed grants support early-stage academic research endeavors focused on urban challenges and urban populations, both domestic and global. This year’s seed grant cycle is the second to […]
Coping with Extreme Heat: Intersecting Vulnerabilities Related to Urban Heat Islands, Homelessness, and Serious Mental Illness
Principal Investigator: Co-Principal Investigator: Periods of extreme heat, which are increasing in frequency due to climate change, have been linked to adverse mental health outcomes, including symptoms related to schizophrenia, substance use, mood disorders, and suicide. At heightened risk for negative effects of extreme heat are individuals experiencing homelessness, who have higher rates of serious […]
Building Resilience after Redlining: Understanding the Cumulative Impact of Heat Vulnerability Factors in Massachusetts
Principal Investigators: Co-Principal Investigators: Extreme heat is becoming more frequent and severe, with deleterious impacts on human health. Populations living in urban areas are at particularly high risk due to overlapping built environment, demographic, and individual-level factors. Decades of racial and economic residential segregation and disinvestment have produced “redlined” neighborhoods characterized by poor housing stock […]
IOC Seed Funding to Study Classroom Air Quality Featured on BU SPH
Patricia Fabian, an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Associate Director at the Institute for Global Sustainability, was recently featured in a BU SPH article highlighting her work on air quality in Boston Public School (BPS) classrooms. During her 2022-2023 sabbatical, Professor Fabian created a research partnership with the Boston Public Schools. […]
Gendered Differences in Mobility and the Demand for Transport: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Urban Ethiopia
Principal Investigator: Africa’s cities are the most rapidly growing in the world; current estimates indicate that by 2050, African cities will grow by an additional 900 million inhabitants and will be home to more than two-thirds of the continent’s population. While urban expansion in Africa will offer opportunities for growth and development, such growth will […]
2023 Early Stage Urban Research Awards
The Boston University Initiative on Cities (IOC) is pleased to announce the 2023 recipients of our ninth annual request for proposals for early stage urban research. These seed grants support early stage academic research endeavors focused on urban challenges and urban populations, both domestic and global. This year’s seed grant cycle is the first to […]
Understanding Long-Term Mobility in Nairobi’s Slums
Principal Investigator This project will kickstart tracking and re-surveying a large sample of Nairobi slum residents surveyed more than a decade ago in 2012. Back then, I jointly led a research team that conducted a complete mapping exercise of Nairobi’s largest informal settlement, Kibera. We collected coarse data on housing conditions from more than 32,000 […]