Tisch College Community Research Center
The Tisch College Community Research Center (TCRC) is a champion and resource for civically engaged and community-centered scholarship across all Tufts campuses. With an emphasis on community participatory and action research, TCRC advances equitable and innovative community-university research partnerships through developing resources, networks, visibility, and new opportunities for learning.
TCRC serves Tisch College, Tufts University, and partner communities in an unusual capacity, with an emphasis on shared decision-making and community knowledge. Strong relationships ground community-engaged research, making it more relevant, meaningful, and social justice-oriented. TCRC supports collaborations among local community partners and Tufts faculty and students to co-produce knowledge addressing our communities’ most urgent questions and concerns.
Learn more in this TCRC journal article.
Featured Project
Social Connectedness and Community Climate Resiliency
TCRC awarded a 2021-2022 seed grant to study how social connectedness, or the complex web of inter-relationships between residents in a community, can serve as a resiliency factor when extreme weather events occur, such as flooding and urban heat islands. Co-led by Rev. Vernon K. Walker (Communities Responding to Extreme Weather/CREW), Justin Hollander (Tufts UEP), James Intriligator (Tufts Engineering), and Josh Ellsworth (Tufts Friedman School), the research used surveys, interviews, and "social listening" (mapping social media use) to measure levels of social connectedness. These tools can help communities gauge and strengthen connections between residents and community hubs, and create usable channels for information sharing, better preparedness, and faster recovery in the face of climate related disasters.
- Explore the report
- Read more in Tufts Now's "Who Has your Back in a Weather Emergency?"
- Listen to James Intriligator on the Boston Neighborhood Network
- Editorial in the Bay State Banner, "Social ties critical to surviving disasters"
- This study is getting attention, including on the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR's Prevention Web)
- The Guardian wrote about the impact of mutual aid and climate disaster recovery highlighted the study with an interview with Rev. Vernon Walker