Homeplace at NYU - Research

The text reads our work. Next to the text, there is a graphic of two African American children playing chase

At the Homeplace Research Collective, we “freedom dream” (Kelley, 2002) with Black and other minoritized children and their families, and then use that brilliance to guide the development of new research, policies, practices, and narratives that both identify and ameliorate inequities facing children and their families today and tomorrow.

Pathways to Thriving: Exploring Future Orientation, Meaning in Life,

and Suicide Prevention among Black Adolescents and Emerging Adults (2024/2025)

PI: Dr. Jasmin Brooks Stephens

This project will use a strengths-based mixed methods approach to understand meaning in life and future orientation among Black adolescents and emerging adults, specifically exploring how these factors may contribute to suicide prevention for these communities.

To learn more about Dr. Brooks Stephens' brilliant work, visit: https://psychology.berkeley.edu/people/jasmin-brooks-stephens

The Glow Up: A Shared Book Reading Activity to Explore Mental Health Conversations Among Black Girls and their Caregivers in the U.S. (2024/2025)

PIs: Haja Kamara, Elisha Arnold, and Dr. Mims

This project will investigate how a novel semi-structured shared book reading procedure provides opportunities for Black parents and their young daughters to discuss mental health, sources of support, and coping within their lived environments.

Detangling Wash Day: Exploring Mental Wellness Through Black Girls’ Hairwashing Routines (2024/2025)

PIs: Morgan Boyd and Dr. Mims

This project will detangle how wash day contributes to Black children’s mental wellness by qualitatively exploring wash day among Black caregiver-child dyads, specifically exploring how it may support Black girls’ mental wellness and emerging ethnic-racial identities.

Collaborative Research: Roots and Wings: Developing Informal Learning Resources in Engineering with Black Families (2024-2028)

PI: Dr. Lauren Mims

This NSF AISL funded project will broaden participation in engineering by developing learning resources through which Black families have opportunities to engage in engineering practices and to see themselves as part of the engineering community. The research team will co-develop informal learning resources with Black families in which children, ages six to ten, have opportunities to engage in biological, civil, computer, electrical, environmental, and mechanical engineering activities at home. Caregivers will support their children through engineering practices such as empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing, while also educating them about Black engineers and scientists who made significant advancements within each field. Research will explore whether and how the identity-affirming informal learning resources fostered the children's engineering identities and interest.

Negotiating Body Image: Black Adolescent Girls’ Response to Body Image Messages Within Their Proximal Environments (2024/2025)

PIs: Gabrielle Sylvester (Honors Thesis)

Research on body image has increasingly recognized the impact of sociocultural pressures on identity and self-esteem, yet there remains a need for an intersectional approach to fully understand how different messages and beliefs interact to shape body image perspectives. Negotiating Body Image Beliefs aims to explore how Black adolescent girls encounter, interpret, and respond to body image messages across various environments by asking the following research question: How do Black adolescent girls negotiate affirming, damaging, and neutral body image messages within their proximal environments?

A Folding Chair (ongoing)

“If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” –Shirley Chisholm

Homeplace focuses on how Black girls and women navigate the questions of “who am I” and “what does it mean to be a Black girl or woman in contemporary society” within a sociocultural context of racism and prejudice. Starting in early adolescence, when many Black girls begin to consider what being their race means to them, they must simultaneously negotiate social challenges such as perceived racial stigmatization and discrimination (Phinney, 1989, Swanson et al., 2003). A Folding Chair investigates the educational experiences of Black girls and women in educational settings. Specifically, we explore the messages and activities within these microsystems (or “worlds”) that are central to the development of Black women and girls: We approach these questions through qualitative research, namely individual and focus group interviews.

Brilliant Joy in a Box (2021- 2024)

Collaborators: Eunique Jones Gibson; Dr. Erika Bocknek; Dr. Addison Duane

Homeplace and its affiliates developed a caregiver-child Black history box project called Brilliant Joy in a Box in 2021! In 2021, we delivered Brilliant Joy in a Box boxes to the homes of 100 families (N= 296 children). Data collection concluded in 2021. Brilliant Joy in a Box project positively contributed to family joy, served as a catalyst for celebrating Black history in the home, and provided an opportunity for families to highlight their impactful home-learning environments during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Black Youth Mental Health Initiative (2022-2025)

Collaborator: Dr. Renae Mayes; Dr. Paul Harris

Along with Homeplace faculty affiliate Renae Mayes, an associate professor at the University of Arizona, we were awarded a $1,050,000 grant for a three-year project, The Black Youth Mental Health Initiative. The grant, awarded by the US Department of Health and Human Services, will support Richmond Public Schools in identifying the mental health needs of Black youth; preventing suicidal ideations, attempts and deaths; and implementing policies that create multi-tiered support systems for students.

To learn more about the Black Youth Mental Health Initiative, please visit: https://sites.google.com/nyu.edu/blackyouthmentalhealth/home

The Girls Before Me Dreamt of the World I am Creating (2024)

Homeplace’s senior undergraduate student Asampete Ohalete, under the mentorship of Dr. Lauren Mims, is conducting an undergraduate honors thesis titled ‘The girls before me dreamt of the world I am creating’, which is an exploration of Afrofuturism on the imagination and identity development of Black girls. Through focus groups with collaborative art making and individual follow-up interviews, we hope to learn more about how Black girls create their own worlds to ensure their futurity. Previous research has shown that Black girls engage in media literacy by accessing contrasting representations of their depicted characters in art mediums, allowing them to refute harmful characterizations (McArthur, 2016; Muhammad & McArthur, 2015). By engaging in imaginative spaces, Black girls begin to question their representations in media and what they can do to push back these narratives and make their own identities that subvert those from the media sphere (Jacobs, 2016; Kelly, 2020). Participating in their arts-based activism and story-telling by allowing Black girls to create Afrofuturistic art highlights the joy and freedom that is found in the autonomy of freedom dreaming, which happens through engagement and practice of Black futurity (Boyd, 2020; Holbert et al., 2020; Kaler-Jones, 2022; Toliver, 2021, 2023) By centering the voices of Black girls, who are experts of their lived realities (Jacobs, 2016), the study affirms their existence in a world where discrimination as the societal norm does not counteract their ability to dream of a Black-centric future (Thomas, 2019; Toliver 2021, 2022).

We Need New Structures (2023-2024)

Collaborator: Justice and Joy National Collaborative

Homeplace and The Justice and Joy National Collaborative were awarded a Spencer Racial Equity Grant (January 2024) for a 1-year project, “We Need New Structures”: Critical Mental Health Conversation Spaces for Girls and Gender Expansive Youth of Color to Envision Better Futures. Through YPAR, the study seeks to explore (1) how girls and gender-expansive youth of color describe the impact of a heightened visibility of systemic racism and violence on their mental health, (2) how and to what extent their engagement in critical conversation spaces (CCS) provides insights into policies, practices, and “new structures” that support their mental health, and (3) how researchers can use a critical conversation spaces approach to deepen girls’ and gender-expansive youth of color participation in research for social change and engage in more authentic, translational youth-driven research.

Black Motherhood IRL (2024 - 2025)

The lived experiences of Black mothers are not adequately represented and recognized in current research! Our research team, the Homeplace Research CollecBve, wants to change that. We are inviBng you to join a research study designed to learn more about the everyday experiences, joys, challenges, and supports, and prioriBes of Black mothers with children under the age of twelve who live on the East Coast (ConnecBcut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, MassachuseMs, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Virginia, as well as the federal capital of Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, Vermont, and West Virginia). We hope to use findings from this study to publish new research and (re)imagine policy and pracBce to beMer support Black mothers and their families.

The image reads “What are today’s young activists dreaming about? We know what they are fighting against, but what are they fighting for? Robin D.G. Kelley, 2002, p. 8 in handwriting font

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