Community-engaged scholarship, research drive Michelle Caswell as she deepens UCLA’s local engagement – Newsroom | UCLA
Professor of information studies Michelle Caswell is an internationally recognized expert in her field who has founded community archives and reimagined what scholarship looks like. This has led to her role as inaugural advisor to the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost (EVCP) Darnell Hunt on community-engaged scholarship, yet her path to UCLA was not straightforward.
With a master’s in theological studies from Harvard, Caswell was on track to become a religious studies professor. Instead, she began working in the nonprofit world, spending time as an early internet-age website producer for the Asia Society Museum in New York. A move to Chicago and work as a fundraiser for a refugee-led social service agency led Caswell to the realization that pursuing an advanced degree in library science with a focus on Southern Asia was her calling.
She went back to school, fell in love with research, writing and archiving, co-founded the South Asian Digital Archive with her colleague Samip Mallick, and eventually emerged with a doctorate in library and information studies from the University of Wisconsin. “I got hooked on archives and realized there was a lot of work to be done because the field was still very narrowly defined by dominant Western bureaucratic recordkeeping practices. Community archives built by and for marginalized populations were not yet considered ‘legitimate’ by the field,” Caswell said. “That, thankfully, has changed over the past two decades.”
When she joined UCLA in 2012, Caswell found a wealth of community-based archives across Los Angeles. She founded the UCLA Community Archives Lab, which she now co-directs with professors Tonia Sutherland and Thuy Vo Dang. The lab facilitates community-led research and features paid internships at local community archives through a Mellon Foundation grant.
As special advisor to Hunt, Caswell is also focused on furthering UCLA’s aims to achieve Goal 1: Deepen our engagement with Los Angeles as part of Creating the Future: UCLA’s 2023-28 Strategic Plan. Along with Shalom Staub, assistant vice provost and executive director of the Center for Community Engagement, she is promoting research and teaching to help deepen the university’s relationship with Los Angeles.
Newsroom sat down with Caswell to talk about her vision and goals for advancing Goal 1.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What specifically do you do in your job?
In my role as special advisor to the EVCP, I work to eliminate institutional barriers to conducting community-engaged scholarship and championing the recognition of that work across campus. One of those barriers is compensating community partners. It has been historically challenging for scholars to pay community partners who might not have permanent addresses, access to technology or bank accounts. Ensuring they are paid what is promised is essential to building trust. We have made some progress, but there is still work to be done.
I co-chair two different groups informing UCLA policy and expanding the university’s impact across the greater Los Angeles area. My focus is ensuring that community-engaged research is done with communities rather than about them. I co-chair the UCLA Community Engagement Advisors Network with Shalom Staub — a group of faculty with one delegate from each school, division or campus unit who has been appointed by their dean or vice provost to build networks of faculty conducting community-engaged scholarship. I also co-chair the UCLA Community Engagement Council with Paco Retana, and that group brings community organizations and government agencies together to shape UCLA policy and direction on community engagement.
I am also working to advance the recognition of community-engaged scholarship in the tenure and promotion process. I advise campus units on creating discipline-specific guidelines for what community engagement means, the format it takes and how it can be recognized.
We do not yet have a great system to track who is doing community-engaged work and the impact of this work across the city and beyond, so we are trying to build one. Understanding UCLA’s influence on the city is a crucial first step in amplifying our impact.
What is a project you’re working on — and why is it important?
In partnership with the two groups I mentioned earlier, I’m currently reviewing applicants for the social impact collaborative grants. Faculty apply for funding to do community-engaged research across three categories: exploratory, for faculty developing relationships with community partners; seed funding, for faculty who have solid community relationships and a concrete project; and transformative funding, for faculty already embedded in projects with community partners.
We now have community partners involved in evaluating grant applications and determining priorities — and that makes it really special. Meeting with a cross section of colleagues from dentistry, nursing, arts and architecture, and social science has been amazing, and the scope of projects and their potential impact are astounding.
What do you love about working at UCLA?
For me, it comes down to the people. I love my faculty colleagues. I am amazed and in awe every day at the research they are doing and their brilliance and creativity. I am equally in awe of my students. Teaching and learning are part of scholarship, and my archival studies students challenge me daily in the most amazing ways. Coming from all over the city and all over the globe, they are dedicated to making the world a better place and bringing a critical, creative lens that keeps me on my toes. When we get together in the classroom, there is such an electric energy because of the incredible possibilities for transformative community-engaged research and practice.
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