Special Project Teams

Gabrielle French

M.A. Student (Social Work). Gabrielle French is a graduate student from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and received her Master’s degree in May 2020. Her focus has been policy and evaluation, specifically as it relates to juvenile and adult justice, and she has interned with the Michigan Center for Youth Justice. On the DCC project, Gabrielle has coordinated the Community Organizations Documenting project team in development of multimedia reports that explore topics related to the carceral state. After graduation, Gabrielle hopes to continue her work in policy and evaluation and justice system reform.

Allie Goodman

Ph.D. Candidate (History). Allie Goodman’s current research focuses on her hometown of Chicago, child incarceration, and the ways that rehabilitative language can create punitive outcomes. Allie currently works with the Community Organizations Documenting Project, focused on turning the Carceral State project’s 2018-2019 symposia series into public facing material that helps explain what the carceral state is and articulates abolitionist possibilities.

Chloe Carlson

Undergraduate Student (Sociology). Chloe Carlson is from Berkley, Michigan, and is studying sociology with a minor in law, justice, and social change. As a member of the Community Organizations Documenting Project team, Chloe has worked on editing video clips from the Carceral State Project 2018-2019 symposia series and constructing StoryMaps that highlight the voices of community members while also providing extra information about the carceral state. In the future, Chloe hopes to attend law school.

Matt Lassiter

Professor of History, DCC co-PI, Director Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab. Matt Lassiter, the co-PI of Documenting Criminalization and Confinement, is a scholar of the twentieth-century United States with a research and teaching focus on political history, urban/suburban studies, racial and social inequality, and the history of policing and the carceral state. His most recent book, The Suburban Crisis: The War on Drugs and White Middle-Class America, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press. He has led undergraduate teams in the creation of seven book-length digital exhibits, including the DCC-affiliated projects Detroit Under Fire: Police Violence, Crime Politics, and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Civil Rights Era (1957-1973) and Crackdown: Policing Detroit through the War on Crime, Drugs, and Youth (1974-1993).

David Helps

Ph.D. Student (History). David Helps’s research and teaching focus on U.S. history since the 1960s, with an emphasis on policing, urban politics, migration, and political economy. His dissertation will cover the relationship between policing and multiculturalism in global Los Angeles between the 1970s and the Rodney King rebellion. He has written on the future of policing and economic justice in Detroit for the Cleveland Review of Books and Detroit Metro-Times.

Mix Mann

Ph.D. Student (History). Mix Mann is a graduate student in history studying the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, class, and policing in the Americas. They study black queer and trans people and their journeys through social systems to make insights on urban landscapes. Mix’s current project follows the life of Detroit’s famous 101-year-old black lesbian, Ruth Ellis, to analyze the history of black queer social spaces. Mix uses they/them/theirs pronouns.

Kat Brausch

PhD Student (History). Kat Brausch is a legal historian of the American left. Her research explores political trials, radical lawyering, and incarceration during the second half of the twentieth century, particularly in the Midwest. She received her JD from the University of Michigan Law School in 2018.

Christine Huang

PhD Student (Urban Planning). Christine Hwang studies how identity, belief systems, and power are encrypted in urban form. Broadly interested in the role of religion in urban planning, her dissertation focuses on the legacy of the French Catholic colonization in Detroit through the practice of parochial mapping. Prior to embarking on her Ph.D., Christine worked as an urban planner, designer, and researcher in Baltimore, MD. Additionally, she worked on projects in urban policy and theory at the Ash Center and the Urban Theory Lab at Harvard University. Christine completed her Master in Urban Planning with a focus on history and theory at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 2014.

Brianna Wells

Undergraduate Student (Public Policy). Brianna Wells is from Lansing, Michigan, and graduated in May 2020 with a B.A. in Public Policy from the Ford School with a minor in Gender and Health. She has conducted archival research into the history of policing in Detroit during the 1970s, especially around issues of gendered violence and narcotics corruption, and is a major contributor to “Crackdown: Policing Detroit through the War on Drugs, Crime, and Youth.” Brianna is passionate about elevating the histories of marginalized peoples, as well as understanding how these stories can inform public policy, and plans to eventually pursue a Ph.D. in a related field.

Rebecca Smith

Ph.D. Candidate (Architecture). Rebecca Smith studies how power is articulated through environmental sensing technologies within the urban context. She is interested in both the material-spatial implementation of these forms of digital infrastructure, as well as the discourses and practices which accompany them. This includes DIY, participatory, and speculative approaches which offer resistance and / or present alternatives. Her current research deals with racialized surveillance in Detroit through Project Green Light. Rebecca received her M.Arch from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2015. Professionally, she has worked on a range of architectural and interdisciplinary design projects, with an ongoing focus on urban space and technology.

Dominic Coschino

Graduate Student (Public Policy). Dominic Coschino is from Roseville, Michigan, and graduated from the University of Michigan in 2019 with a double major in History and Political Science before entering the Ford School to study public policy. He was a member of the original Detroit Under Fire team for the Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab and is now a research associate with the Conditions of Confinement team. Dom wrote his senior honors thesis on the class-action litigation against the Wayne County Jail in the late 1960s and early 1970s and then created a StoryMap and infographics about this case for the DCC project. He believes in using law and policy to empower disaffected communities and dismantle the carceral state.

Kemper Fagan

M.A. Student (Architecture). Kemper Fagan focuses on spatial justice, community engagement, and the role of humane design in architecture. As part of the Prison Modeling Project, Kemper has been researching the current state of incarcerated spaces in Michigan, and she also has provided design and infographic support for other DCC teams. Kemper plans to utilize her degree to promote architecture that is community informed and equitable.

Rinika Prince

M.A. Student (Architecture). Rinika Prince’s architectural focus is on design that interlaces imagined narratives and built realities. In the Prison Modelling Project, Rinika has worked on documenting the state of incarcerated spaces in Michigan and created graphical narratives highlighting the power of architecture on individuals. She also has provided design and infographic support for other DCC teams. Rinika is an international student from India and hopes to continue to be a part of work that uplift social justice and human dignity through participatory design frameworks.

Charlotte Boucher

Charlotte is a PhD candidate in Political Science. Her research focuses on the effects of police violence on the subjective citizenship of people living in neighborhoods with both very high and very low violence. She is using neighborhoods in Chicago, IL and Paris, France as case studies.

Heidi Uhlman

Megan Wilson

Ph.D. Student (Classical Studies). Megan Wilson is a member of the Prison Creative Arts Project and, as part of the Confronting Conditions of Confinement team, has undertaken archival research on the history of Michigan prison conditions and conducted oral history interviews with returning citizens about their lived experiences. Megan also leads the DCC Communications & Outreach Team.

Marlon Rajan

Undergraduate Student (Creative Writing). Marlon Rajan is from New York City, New York, whose passion for criminal justice and human rights activism stems from their own experience growing up in an urban environment. Marlon has worked with the NYCLU and NYC Unity Project to advocate for social and racial justice in the NYC public schools, including an end to the school-to-prison pipeline, and works to incorporate civil rights and LGBT+ rights issues into their writing and activism.

Joe Bauer

Research Consultant, LSA Technology Services. Joe Bauer specializes in humanities, social sciences, and interdisciplinary digital project methods and works with scholars on conceptualizing, planning, and finding resources for a digital project. Additionally, he consults on sustainability, preservation, accessibility, privacy, consent, or grant requirements. He holds a Ph.D. in Technology Studies, and he teaches courses on technology and society part time at Eastern Michigan University’s College of Technology.

Matt Carruthers

Metadata Projects Librarian, University of Michigan Library. Matt Carruthers supports the creation and management of metadata for Library and University projects and has been embedded with the DCC project since the proposal phase in spring 2019. He holds a Master’s degree in Library Science with a specialization in Digital Libraries from Indiana University and a Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Wisconsin. Prior to working at the University of Michigan, Matt was the Metadata Librarian at the University of Miami Library.