Past Events
The CSSR Urban Research Hub Spring 2026 Talk Series Presents: Dr. Chrystal George Mwangi
Monday, February 9, 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Dr. George Mwangi, PhD is a Professor in the Higher Education Program at George Mason University. She also serves as Director of the Higher Education Program and Director of the School of Integrative Studies Graduate Programs. On February 9, 2026 Dr. George Mwangi discussed her most recent co-authored book, Hidden in Blackness: Being Black and Being an Immigrant in U.S. Schools and Colleges.
Her talk had us think more deeply about how education systems shape perceptions of Black immigrants from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Hidden in Blackness examines the racialization of immigrants in the United States. With her co-author Adaurennaya C. Onyewyenyi, they look at how Black immigrant students move through the education system, and how they navigate American society more broadly. Drawing from ethnographic research, their work closely examines how students adjust to campus culture, social life, and academic expectations while balancing ethnicity, generational responsibility, and social class.
Her presentation spoke to the changing demographics that are reshaping Black America. Since 2000, two-thirds of Black immigrants to the United States have come from Sub-Saharan Africa. Today, one in ten Black people in the U.S. is foreign-born, and one in five children are foreign-born. Many Black immigrants first settle in major urban hubs such as New York City, Miami, and Tampa, where they directly influence classrooms, workplaces, and local policy. Dr. George Mwangi emphasized that understanding how Black immigrants move through urban hubs is essential to understanding race, immigration, and mobility in contemporary America.
Hidden in Blackness is thematically organized around three central ideas: Hidden, Complicating, and Illumination. Black immigrants’ ethnic identities are often hidden once they arrive in the United States, as they are quickly placed into a singular Black American racial category. While international students may initially be identified by nationality, they are frequently racialized by appearance once on campus. Students must navigate the pressures of the American Dream, confront stereotypes such as the model minority myth, and grapple with narratives and microsystems that create racial wedges within Black communities.
The theme of complicating asks how institutions and scholars can amplify Black immigrant experiences without pitting different nationalities against one another. Today, many international students face reduced institutional support and heightened uncertainty. She emphasized the need for collaboration among and between scholars, universities, and community leaders to build support systems.
The concept of illumination was introduced as a framework that centers the multidimensional identities of Black immigrant students. Many students carry a deep sense of collective responsibility, feeling that they represent not only themselves but also their families, communities, and sometimes countries of origin. Yet this strong sense of family and communal consciousness is not always matched by institutional recognition or support. Illumination calls for research and practice that better reflects the complexity, resilience, and joy within Black diasporic life.
Dr. George Mwangi concluded with a call to action, encouraging educators, researchers, and community members to think boldly and collaboratively. She urged the audience to develop innovative research methods, strengthen community partnerships, and act not only in the moment but beyond it. Her message was clear: understanding race, immigration, identity, and education requires both rigorous scholarship and reimagined innovation.
We are grateful to Dr. George Mwangi for sharing her scholarship and insights, and to everyone who joined us for this engaging event and lively discussion.
You can learn more about Hidden in Blackness: Being Black and Being an Immigrant in U.S. Schools and Colleges book here.
The Urban Research Hub Presents: Digitalizing Welfare: The 'One Nation One Ration Card' and the Reshaping of Social Security in Post-Covid India
Wednesday, April 16, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
The Urban Hub Research event, “Digitalizing Welfare: The 'One Nation One Ration Card' and the Reshaping of Social Security in Post-Covid India” proved to be a compelling and eye-opening exploration of India’s evolving welfare landscape in the digital age. Held on Wednesday, April 16, from 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM, the session was focused on the topic of how digital governance is transforming the social security fabric for millions of Indians, especially internal migrants.
The event featured an engaging presentation by Professor Veena Naregal from the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. She delved into India’s One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) scheme. Professor Naregal traced the historical roots of India’s food security policies, from the 1940s initiatives during WWII to the 2013 National Food Security Act, which extended coverage to nearly 67% of the population—including women, children, and marginalized groups. Yet, despite these progressive steps, challenges persisted. The Public Distribution System is tied to a fixed home address, leaving migrant workers and the homeless without access to ration cards—an issue that became glaring during the COVID-19 lockdowns when millions were stranded, and food security became a matter of urgent concern.
Professor Naregal emphasized the critical role of digital reform in addressing these gaps. The ONORC scheme, which leverages biometric data and digital identification, aims to provide portability of entitlements across states. However, the journey has been fraught with hurdles—biometric failures, outdated data, and resistance from various states. For instance, despite Supreme Court directives mandating the inclusion of migrants, many states, including Delhi, have been slow or reluctant to claim credit for implementing these measures, citing the sensitive nature of migrant data collection.
A particularly poignant part of the discussion was the paradox of progress: While the digital system promises equitable access, issues like biometric failures—over 90% in some cases—and the exclusion of unhoused populations reveal the limitations of technology-driven solutions. Professor Naregal pointed out that the Modi government’s narrative of achievement often masks these ongoing challenges, with media manipulation shaping the public discourse. She emphasized the importance of understanding migration patterns—often underestimated in official data—and how they influence the efficacy of welfare schemes. She highlighted that internal migration in India exceeds international migration, driven by demand for labor and circular migration, yet remains undercounted due to limitations in census data and administrative records.
Discussant Professor Maction Komwa from Mason’s Geography & Geoinformation Science department added depth to the discussion by drawing compelling comparisons from global contexts. For example, in parts of Africa, food crises are exploited politically, with governments using distribution as a means of patronage. Meanwhile, innovative programs like Brazil’s Green Exchange—where recycling incentives are linked to food aid—illustrate alternative models addressing food security and environmental sustainability simultaneously.
The event concluded with reflections on the political narratives surrounding food distribution. While digital reforms are touted as achievements, the reality remains complex.
Seeing is Believing: Prison Mediascapes, Hegemonic Discourses, and Oppositional Strategies
Wednesday, March 5, 2025 Horizon Hall, 6325 3:00 P.M. - 4:00 P.M.
Jae-Lynn is a graduate student in the Anthropology department. Her thesis explores how various types of media—including social media, television, film, and news—shape perceptions of the criminal legal system and connect to the hegemony of prisons in the United States. It examines how people accept or reject media representations and derive meaning from them. Two focus groups of Northern Virginia residents from diverse backgrounds engaged in guided discussions on media and the carceral system. Participants analyzed representations, explored their cultural and social meanings, and used lived experiences to affirm or challenge what they had seen. Through this phenomenological inquiry, they reflected on key themes, including the punish-reform dichotomy of the prison system, witnessing injustice on social media, the “prison porn” genre, and how public opinion influences the system via mediascapes.
The Urban Hub provided constructive feedback and brainstormed ideas to enhance Jae-lynn's thesis, and advance conversations around new paths for disrupting hegemonic norms surrounding incarceration in society.
Faculty Panel on Urban Research
Thursday, March 21, 2024 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM EDT
The Urban Research Hub invited attendees to hear from six Mason faculty members across three colleges/schools about their latest urban research and participate in the discussion / Q&A afterward.
The topics covered included human mobility, environmental justice, built environment, public space, social memory, systematic peacebuilding, violence prevention, disability, accessibility, urban design, gentrification, displacement, rapid transit, suburban development, and urban resilience.
Faculty panelist were:
- Johanna Bockman - Global Affairs, CHSS
- Alireza Ermagun - Geography and Geoinformation Science, College of Science
- Arthur Romano - Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution
- Sun-Young Park - History, CHSS
- Rashmi Sadana - Anthropology, CHSS
- Zachary Schrag - History, CHSS
CSSR Urban Research Hub presents a talk by Malini Ranganathan: Towards an Anticaste Epistemology for Environmental Justice in Urban India
Monday, April 15, 2024 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM EDT
In urban India, the loss of land rights, unsafe sanitation work, and flood and climate change risk—referred to as "environmental unfreedoms"—were structured by caste violence, Islamophobia, and gender and class hierarchies in ways that critical scholarship had yet to take stock of. Based on a book project in progress, the talk put forth a critical caste framework for examining environmental privileges and unfreedoms rooted in a longer history of caste power, racial colonial capitalism, and Hindu majoritarianism. It drew on ethnographic research on challenges related to flooding, housing, and labor inequities that disproportionately beset lower castes, Dalits, and Muslims, particularly in a moment of rightwing nationalism. Ultimately, through learning, writing, and protesting alongside anticaste journalists, activists, workers, and union organizers in Bengaluru over the past six years, the argument is made that any understanding of environmental justice in urban India—and indeed globally—had to be rooted in collective and intersectional calls for dignity, liberation, and humanism. Such a reconceptualization presented a serious counter to the epistemology of mainstream liberal environmentalism.
CSSR-Urban Research Hub Presents a Talk by Dr. Katie Wells: Disrupting DC: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City
September 11, 2023 10:30 AM to 11:45 AM EDT
Katie Wells gave a super engaging lecture to students and faculty about her and her co-authors' (Kafui Attoh and Declan Cullen) qualitative and quantitative research on how Uber entered DC's transport landscape more than ten years ago (detailed in their new book, Disrupting DC: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City, published by Princeton University Press this year). She started by asking us to think about the question of land in general – how we allocate it and organize it. Wells is a geographer, so that is how she came to the urban space and transport mobility issue. However, she then posed a more specific question, pointing to her angle on Uber – how the city decided to regulate this new form of chauffeuring people around (including comparisons to the highly regulated taxi industry and taking into account issues of race, community, and access across the city). The talk focused on how Uber negotiated with the city not to regulate their business. As Wells put it, "The idea of regulation as a public good went out the window." She detailed how Uber (through lobbyists) was able to undermine the notion of public oversight. Well's story is about Uber but more broadly about urban governance (or the lack of it). She also showed how the lack of data about Uber – the number of accidents, insurance claims by drivers, thefts from and assaults of drivers, assaults on passengers, and more is unknown. In light of the lack of transparency about Uber and its pervasiveness in the urban landscape – on public roads – Wells's co-authored book asks us to think more broadly about what we expect from our cities.
CSSR Urban Research Hub Workshop:
Corporate Community Development: National Landing and Beyond Workshop
Friday, March 31, 2023 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM EDT
In 2018, Amazon announced Northern Virginia as the site for its second headquarters. National Landing represented a rebranding of the Crystal City, Pentagon City, and Potomac Yard neighborhoods by Amazon and the lead developer, JBG Smith. Since the announcement, the area has been carefully crafted to fit the overall brand image of Amazon—one that met all the criteria of a globally shared place-branding checklist, including a brand name, unifying artistic elements, updated infrastructure, and green spaces. A group of researchers raised the issues that resulted from corporate community development as they related to not only National Landing but also other urban development projects globally. The CSSR Urban Research hosted a workshop to discuss this important topic.
CSSR Urban Research Hub Workshop:
Corporate Community Development: National Landing and Beyond Workshop Call for Papers
Wednesday, March 1, 2023 11:59 PM EST
Submissions of abstracts were invited from graduate students, established scholars, public administrators, and urban planners at any stage of their study across disciplines within humanities and social sciences from any part of the world. All participants with accepted abstracts were invited to present their research (as a paper in progress or other modalities) in the workshop. As it was a workshop and not a conference, the focus was discussing work in progress and brainstorming ideas.
A Dissertation Workshop with Václav Orcígr
Friday, February 24, 2023 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM EST
Václav Orcígr discussed the possible benefits of the theory of practice for exploring spatial inequalities in current cities. As a post-communist city, Prague created an interestingly colorful and broad field of actors involved in urban governance, planning, decision-making, and public participation. Within the context of critical discourse analysis applied to media articles and public meetings, the workshop focused on the patterns of ideological dominance. The workshop format included a short presentation and joint discussion focusing on the writing process, sharing experiences, and evaluating the research. The workshop also focused on reconsidering the concepts of field and capital and their use within planning practices and urban governance. Václav Orcígr, a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at Charles University in Prague, Czechia, had been residing in Washington, D.C., as part of his Fulbright program stay at George Mason University. His research focuses on the neoliberal development of cities in the post-socialist context, housing affordability and alternatives, ideological performativity within constructed discourses on urbanism, and the conception of the right to the city.