Community
Community-engaged scholarship and public sociology are central to who I am as a sociologist. I work to build bridges between the university, community organizations, and local government through my research, teaching, and public humanities projects.
Sadie Dempsey, Micaela Lipman, and youth leaders at the Youth Talk Back gallery opening.
Photograph of the Youth Talk Back: Visions for Local Democracy interactive art exhibit at Western New York Book Arts.
Sadie Dempsey being interviewed for the local news at the Youth Talk Back gallery opening.
Sadie Dempsey, Micaela Lipman, and youth leaders at the Youth Talk Back gallery opening.
Youth Talk Back: Visions for Local Democracy
Youth Talk Back: Visions for Local Democracy is an event series that brings together youth from diverse civic organizations across Buffalo to imagine what a more democratic, youth-centered city might look like.
In the first event, youth shared their visions for Buffalo through focus groups, surveys, and a zine-making workshop. For the second event, we created an interactive gallery exhibit that featured student art and our research on youth in Buffalo and the United States. More than 60 community leaders and elected officials from city, county, and state government attended the gallery opening and heard directly from youth leaders.
The exhibit is on view at Western New York Book Arts until September 4th, 2026. You can find the companion report, which features student art and research from our team, here.
This work was supported by the Mellon Foundation and the Department of Philosophy at the University at Buffalo. Photographs courtesy of Omar Brown (UB Libraries) and Michael Bosworth (WNY Book Arts).
Public Policy in Buffalo
As a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, I collaborated with Micaela Lipman and a team of students at the University at Buffalo to produce a series of policy recommendations to reform the City Charter Revision Process. Students presented their research and policy to Deputy Mayor Maria Whyte and Rosa Pizzi of Corporation Council. Students' proposed recommendations and policy language - which included a decennial Revision Commission, public application portal, and publicity of all applicants - will appear on the November 2026 ballots in Buffalo (link 1, link 2).
Student leaders on this project include Sydney Cuyler, Dylan Kleehammer, Sara LaRoche, Nicholas Mohabir, Nicholas Moreau, Elizabeth O'Boyle, Rachael Strickland, Jessica Williams, and Connor Whitney.
This work was supported by the Mellon Foundation and the Department of Philosophy at the University at Buffalo.
Art & Activism
Art has been an indispensable tool for activists to fight for change throughout social movement history. It can also serve as a crucial site for imagining and creating alternative futures. This community-engaged project was a collaboration with two undergraduate students (Samuel Beaver and Michelle Drane) and Leaders Igniting Transformation (LIT). Together, we created a workshop on the history of art in social movements and an arts library for high school students in Milwaukee. The students in LIT's Black Hogwarts summer program painted, sculpted, illustrated, and acted to create visual representations of what safer schools looks like to them, which were on display to family, friends, and community members during a gallery night.
This work was supported by the Center for the Humanities at UW - Madison through a HEX grant.
The collage to the left includes student artwork alongside art from movements we studied including the Black Arts Movement, The Young Lords, and ACT UP.
Democracy in Dane County
As a Mellon Public Humanities Fellow, I worked with the League of Women Voters in Dane County to make the political process more accessible to all Wisconsinites. Together, we developed a practice we call "deep listening" and interactive materials (in English and Spanish) to help community members discover how government shapes their everyday lives, make the political process more approachable, and build relationships, particularly among youth, communities of color, and other groups that have been historically excluded from politics.
This work was supported by the Mellon Foundation and the Center for the Humanities at UW - Madison.
Expanding Citizenship
In collaboration with Literacy Network and the League of Women Voters of Dane County, I developed a workshop about civic engagement for immigrants and refugees who are preparing to take the USCIS citizenship exam. Using a student identified issue as a case study (housing tends to be the most popular), this workshop illustrate how government impacts their daily lives and outlines actions that students can take to address the issue through education, advocacy, and organizing, even if they cannot vote yet.
I teach this workshop to all of Literacy Network's citizenship classes, which are offered three times per year.