Our chapter was just published in a new volume Exploring Equitable Community-Campus Relationships, edited by Karla Bird, Suchitra V. Gururaj, Sara B. Moore, Andrea Robles, and Cindy Vincent Claar (Routledge, 2026). I’m proud to have co-authored chapter 14 with Zoë Ackerman, Joceline Fidalgo, Minnie McMahon, and John Smith. Our chapter is titled: “Navigating Power, Equity, and Co-creation in a Community–University Partnership: Critical Reflections on the Long-term Relationship between Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative and Tufts University.”
Thanks to my co-authors and all the folks at DSNI and Tufts UEP students, alumni, and faculty who have been part of this partnership over the last 3+ decades. The book is available now through Routledge.
Abstract
This chapter reflects on how we have been building a more equitable long-term partnership between Tufts University Department of Urban & Environmental Policy & Planning (UEP) and Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI). We explore how our decade-long Co-education/Co-research (CORE) partnership has been addressing three dimensions of equity: distributional, procedural, and epistemic. CORE is a co-creation model that draws upon action research, popular education, and universities as anchor institutions. CORE has been co-producing knowledge and action to further community control over development, such as the establishment of the Greater Boston Community Land Trust Network and a popular education train-the-trainer course. We find that co-governance and equitable sharing of funding are leading to more distributional and procedural equity and longer-term impacts for the community partner. However, we also find that some of our everyday practices can subtly maintain and reinforce epistemic inequities, such as valuing academic knowledge over that of community residents and practitioners. As community members, students, and faculty, we reflect on the contradictions and tensions we have encountered, which are also opportunities for shifting, disrupting, and transforming towards more equitable relations. This is messy work that requires a lot of communication, trust, reflection, and time.
Published by