Regional + City Planning alumna and affiliate faculty Vanessa Morrison and Gina Sofola, PhD student Eyakem Guiliat, faculty member John Harris, along with eight community co-researchers published theoretical reflections on the Women of Northeastern Oklahoma City Photovoice Project in the journal Gender, Place and Culture.
The Photovoice project was unveiled in 2016 with the purpose of bringing the neighborhood safety concerns of black women to the attention of local policy makers. The article looks theoretically at Black Feminist ideas and makes four key points.
The first point made by this article suggests that the neighborhood safety perceptions of black women cannot be disentangled into discrete individuals. It also suggests that neighborhood safety perceptions cannot be disentangled into demographic modifiers, such as race or gender.
The second key point of this article addresses the common emphasis on individual experience within safety scholarship and how it has the ability to erase the intersectional political and spatial identity of black women. This is an important topic which is covered in great depth in this article.
The third point of this article is that participatory safety methods focusing on individuals’ recommendations will miss meaningful aspects of women’s lives.
Lastly, the findings within the project allow the co-researchers to find economic and political solutions to these problems. This article also states that positive change will only occur when they gain control of processes that create urban policy and tools of urban development.
To view the abstract, and read the full article, click here.
Photos from Women of NE OKC Photovoice Project
Telesis, a journal produced by students in the University of Oklahoma Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture, has earned first place in the 2026 Douglas Haskell Award for Student Journals for its seventh volume, “Unfold.” This marks the fourth time the publication has earned recognition for excellence in student architectural journalism. It shares the honor with student journals from Columbia University, University of Michigan, and Cal Poly.
Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture congratulates Thinh "Henry" Duong, a master's student in the Division of Interior Design, for earning first place in the 2026 Robert Bruce Thompson Annual Student Light Fixture Design Competition.
Gibbs College of Architecture Institute for Quality Communities (IQC) Director and Division of Planning, Landscape Architecture, and Design (PLAD) faculty member Amber N. Wiley, Ph.D., recently published a new book, Collective Yearning: Black Women Artists from the Zimmerli Art Museum.
