Tahira Mahdi

As part of UMBC’s Public Humanities program, the Baltimore Field School (BFS) 2.0 will continue to support a planning intensive that moves away from extractive research models and builds humanities projects developed with community partners. In the midst of the pandemic, BFS prioritized our partners and built trust by acting on their feedback and adjusting our objectives. BFS 2.0 will further expand these frameworks of equitable and ethical public engagement and advance these goals through: 1) 6 Community Fellows who will help develop models for community-centered projects and 2) 11 BFS 2.0 Fellows (graduate students and faculty) who will solidify ethical humanities research, teaching, and learning. Community Fellows include leaders from intuitions like the Baltimore Beat, Mera Kitchen Collective, Beautiful Side of Ugly, and Organize Poppleton. Their work advances social justice issues focused on three core tracks: public information, racial equity, and food and land justice.