MAPP is proud to announce that Ariel Bierbaum, along with her team of three other researchers, has secured $50,000 in research grant funding from the Spencer Foundation’s Small Research Grants Program. The grant will allow continuing work into the socioeconomic impact of public school closures in Philadelphia, and will look specifically at issues of school reuse and/or demolition.
Bierbaum, along with researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Texas, will examine the 24 schools shuttered by the School District of Philadelphia in 2013, and the subsequent use or demolition of the buildings. Her team’s research will build understanding of how the politics of public education intersect with patterns of racial capitalism, urban economies and austerity governance. Schools are crucial social, political and physical infrastructures in their neighborhoods, and the longitudinal impacts of school buildings that are sold, demolished, or repurposed are not fully acknowledged. Much of Bierbaum’s research will focus on one particular school—the Bok Technical High School—that was open for 75 years before closing down.
“I'm very excited to continue my work in Philadelphia,” Bierbaum said. “I will dig more deeply into issues of adaptive reuse, public memory, historic preservation and displacement.”