Social Science Community Engagement Story Lab

The Social Science Community Engagement Story Lab  (SCSL)

Founding Director: Dr. Lisa J. Hardy

Affiliated Faculty: Dr. Leah Mundell, Dr. Corina Kellner, Dr. Eric Otenyo

Location: Room 131 and 131a

The SCSL serves as a central location for learning and best practices for community-engaged research and storytelling in northern Arizona. Faculty, students, and community partners develop and implement interdisciplinary projects in community engagement, social justice, youth participation, and creative arts research. With a focus on storytelling related to medical anthropology and community health, partners develop projects and conduct training sessions on ethics, primary data collection, mixed-methods analysis, and dissemination of findings through professional presentations and publications.

The lab also provides research, training, and opportunities for storytelling for social change. Dr. Hardy provides talks and workshops based on her book, editorial activities with the journal Practicing Anthropology, and related active research projects that include faculty, undergraduate, and graduate student collaboration. Dr. Mundell works with student research groups to integrate community organizing and social science research approaches in collaborating with local schools and organizations.

The lab offers opportunities in developing and pitching op-eds, collaborative writing, journal editing, and the development of policy recommendations for students and partners.

In collaboration with student interns Dr. Hardy’s story lab will host a series of “poetry as method” workshops this spring for people aged 14-25 to create artistic forms based on research transcripts. 

We welcome new community partners and undergraduate and graduate students as interns and researchers. Students are also welcome to participate in the lab for course credit in active projects including through Community and University Public Inquiry.

Lab intern Taylor Schweikert won a Student-led Projects in the Arts, Creative Activity, and Scholarship Program (SPArCS) award for 2024-2025 for her project: Collaborative Storytelling and Listening: The Aftermath of Grooming and Sexual Misconduct. Congratulations Taylor!

Examples of recent research include:

• Sociocultural Dimensions of Covid-19—faculty, graduate students, and international collaborators conducting a mixed-methods investigation of life during Covid-19;
• Interview, focus group, and data analysis workshops;
• Supporting Immigrant Families in Flagstaff Schools—faculty and undergraduate researchers collaborate with Flagstaff Unified School District and Northern Arizona Interfaith Council to support improved language access services, teacher training, and parent engagement;
• Immigration and Public Health—faculty and graduate students implementing mixed-methods research to assess impacts of immigration policy on health and wellness in Arizona;

Would you like to learn more about the lab or this research? Click here for more information about current projects. Contact the lab at lisa.hardy@nau.edu or leah.mundell@nau.edu

Social Science Community Engagement Story Lab Current Projects

Check out news on the work of SCSL

• Staying safe in the time of coronavirus: pay attention to ‘the guy you know’
• “As Arizona coronavirus cases surge from early reopening, Indigenous nations suffer not only more COVID-19 but also the blame”
• Tribes mount organized responses to COVID-19, in contrast to state and federal governments
• How do Americans view the virus? Anthropology professor examines attitudes, perceptions of COVID-19
• GovExec Daily: Native Communities, the Federal Government and the Pandemic

Academic Publications

• Hardy, Lisa J. “Connection, Contagion, and COVID-19”. Medical Anthropology 39, no. 8 (2020): 655-659. https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2020.1814773
• Hardy, Lisa J. “Negotiating Inequality: Disruption and COVID‐19 in the United States” City & Society 32, no. 2 (2020) https://doi.org/10.1111/ciso.12312

Current Projects

Sociocultural Dimensions of Covid-19

A research team led by Dr. Lisa Hardy is conducting a mixed-methods investigation of life during the Covid-19 pandemic. The team has conducted over 60 interviews and collected nearly 1,000 survey responses on pandemic life. They are analyzing data and developing strategies for future pandemic response, risk reduction, and health equity. Findings from and applications of the research include increasing knowledge on pandemics and xenophobia, the importance of sovereignty in pandemic response, using disability justice frameworks to understand pandemic ableism, investigating the relationship between social movements and COVID-19, and understanding how gender and political orientation impacts well-being for left-leaning women living in opposition to the federal government.

Research Personnel and Partners:

• Dr. Lisa Hardy, Director
• Dr. Eric Otenyo, Faculty Affiliate
• Dr. Corina Kellner, Faculty Affiliate
• Amy Hughes, Cline Library, Partner

Flagstaff Immigrant Youth Equity Research Collaboration

This project is a collaboration between Northern Arizona Institutions for Community Leadership (NAICL), a broad-based nonprofit organization working to build leadership for the common good, and Community and University Public Inquiry (CUPI), an interdisciplinary, undergraduate research initiative at Northern Arizona University that facilitates student experiences of collaborative and applied research. For the past four years, undergraduates in the CUPI program have worked with NAICL immigrant leaders to improve opportunities for immigrant students and their families in the Flagstaff Unified School District (FUSD). Through this community-based research project, students and community leaders have developed and provided trainings for hundreds of FUSD staff members. They have held the school district accountable for improving language accessibility, with FUSD committing to expanded translation and interpretation services for non-English-speaking parents. And they are developing Immigrant Family Support Teams in five Flagstaff schools, where parents, students, and school staff work together to identify barriers for immigrant students and ensure that resources are available for students of all backgrounds to succeed and move on to higher education.

Research Personnel and Partners:

• Dr. Leah Mundell, Faculty Advisor
• Northern Arizona Interfaith Council Organizer Roxana Cardiel, Partner
• Flagstaff Unified School District, Partner

Selected bios

Roxana Cardiel is the Organizer for Northern Arizona Interfaith Council and its education and training arm, Northern Arizona Institutions for Community Leadership. Her work focuses on building leadership for civic participation across lines of race, class, age, and religion and organizing for issues that advance the common good. She is also a graduate student in the Masters in Sustainable Communities program at NAU and the graduate facilitator for the Immigrant Youth Equity research pod.

Lisa J Hardy, MA, PhD is a Professor of Anthropology and author. She is the founding director of the Social Science Community Engagement Story Lab and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Practicing Anthropology. Current research and writing includes youth-led investigations of generational outcomes related to living through lockdown and arts-based poetry as methods training and workshops. Dr. Hardy presents workshops and keynotes on public scholarship and storytelling and authored a recent toolkit on storytelling together.

Christina Meeks is a graduate student studying anthropology. Her research interests are the anthropology of disability and queer anthropology. Lab work includes research, analysis, and presenting research on youth and COVID-19.

Leah Mundell, PhD, is an Associate Teaching Professor in Anthropology and coordinator for the Community Engagement Minor in the Sustainable Communities program. Her applied research has focused primarily on migration and issues affecting immigrant families in the U.S. and South Africa, from a community organizing perspective.

Taylor Schweikert is an undergraduate student studying Women’s and Gender Studies and Sociology. She served as an integral team member on the project Socio-cultural Dimensions of Covid-19, with a focus on youth arts-based research. She is a recipient of the Student-led Projects in the Arts and Creative Activity (SPArCS) award, and is interested in youth advocacy and mental health, story sharing, and arts-based research–especially when they all intertwine.

Carly Thompson-Camptior, MA is Ph.D. candidate in Interdisciplinary Health. Her research interests include contested illness experience, persistent Lyme disease, patient advocacy, embodied health movements, and medical knowledge production. Her lab work includes research, analysis, and writing.