UAlbany and Albany Law Researchers to Tackle Law, Urban Blight, Politics, and Race and Gender Relations

The UAlbany-Albany Law venture fund reflects a new deeper affiliation, allowing opportunities such as novel research projects and grant prospects that stem from faculty collaborations between the two institutions.

ALBANY, NY (January 6, 2016) – The University at Albany and Albany Law School have announced the recipients of a collaborative venture fund designed to enable faculty from the two organizations to pursue joint research opportunities.

Plans for the fund were revealed in October 2015 when the two higher education institutions announced a deeper affiliation enabling important new academic opportunities for students, novel research and grant prospects for faculty. Funding for the award was based primarily on collaboration with faculty between both institutions.

As publicly engaged institutions, Albany Law School and UAlbany are dedicated to creating reciprocal partnerships to tackle what matters most to the community. Through combined research, teaching, and service, the organizations can partner with local and global communities to address complex societal challenges.

UAlbany President Robert J. Jones, a staunch proponent of public engagement has been quoted often saying “the world’s challenges are too large to be solved by just one entity. Partnerships and informational cross-pollination are essential to solving vexing public and societal problems.”

Alicia Ouellette, president & dean for Albany Law School said, “The Law School’s mission has included community service and research since its inception in 1851. Collaborating with the largest research institution in the region is exciting for our faculty and creates endless possibilities for the future.”

Forty-Four faculty members are the inaugural recipients of the 2015-16 collaborative venture fund  — 26 from UAlbany and 18 from Albany Law School. The awarded projects include the following topics and their lead investigators:

• Activating our Partnership, Harnessing our Strengths: Collaborative Research Agenda Setting and Funder Engagement -- Dina Refki, director, UAlbany Center for Women in Government & Civil Society; Peter Halewood, professor of law, Albany Law School; and Sarah Rogerson, professor and director, Albany Law School Law, Clinic, & Justice Center.
  
  The project develops and prioritizes a human rights research agenda, and provides a road map for joint research efforts between UAlbany and Albany Law. It also seeks to proactively cultivate and engage selected funders in supporting the research agenda through in-person meetings and presentation.
• The Capital Region Urban Blight Experiential Learning Project: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Tackling Problem Properties in Albany and Schenectady -- Raymond Brescia, professor and director, Albany Law’s Government Law Center, and Theresa Pardo, director and associate research professor, UAlbany Center for Technology in Government.
  
  Students from UAlbany’s Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, the College of Engineering & Applied Sciences, and Albany Law School will collaborate on experiential learning opportunities with the cities of Schenectady and Albany to identify legal intervention options and new data driven solutions regarding urban blight.
  
  The project, an outgrowth of CTG’s work with four Capital Region cities on addressing blight through regional information sharing, will culminate with the students presenting their findings and recommendations to city officials and at NYS local government professional meetings.
• Legal History Event Series -- Richard Hamm, professor of history, UAlbany; David Pratt, Professor of Law, Albany Law School; and Stephen Gottlieb, Professor of Law, Albany Law School.
  
  The project encompasses an event series in legal history utilizing public talks and roundtables to inaugurate, enhance, and advertise the newly established collaborative Juris Doctor and Masters of Arts in History degree programs. The series will highlight the way that history and law interact and inform each other by exploring topics of broad interest. Scheduled talks such as "When Lawyers Ruled the World: Using History to Rethink the Origins of Global Governance" or "The Invention of Marriage: Thoughts about Christianity, Law, and History" will engage and inform while underscoring the importance of thinking in time to the both the legal and historical audience.
• From the Pipeline to “Clouds” of Opportunity: A Vision to Develop an Institute for Critical Race and Gender Studies -- Janell Hobson, associate professor, women’s gender and sexuality studies, UAlbany; Donna Young, Professor of Law, Albany Law School; and Annette Johnson, Department of Africana Studies and the School of Public Health.
  
  This project expands on the 2015-16 series, Racial Justice: A Transformative Conversation Series. The goal is to develop an Institute for Critical Race and Gender Studies, which bridges interdisciplinary interests in race and gender issues between the UAlbany and Albany Law School and seeks to build a vision for grant development and goals for public programming and curricula development.
• The Politics of Difference and the Threshold of Law: A Collaborative Conference in Law and the Humanities - Charles Shepherdson, director of liberal studies and professor of English, UAlbany; and Christian Sundquist, Professor of Law, Albany Law School.
  
  "The Politics of Difference and the Threshold of Law" will be a conference designed to examine how violence and injustice -- from police violence to environmental injustice to exclusionary practices organized around race, gender, religion and nationality -- are negotiated both within and outside legal institutions. It will also explore questions of social justice and establish a link between Albany Law School faculty and the interdisciplinary liberal studies MA program at the University at Albany, with the aim of establishing long-term collaboration.

The collaborative research projects are part of the organizations’ efforts to further affiliate themselves. They follow the announcements of a $1.6 Million International Health Law Project in the Middle East and two articulation agreements designed to create new academic offerings in law, criminal justice and history.

Another round of funded recipients will be announced in Spring 2016.

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