About Public Scholarship Practice Space
Building on the strength and long history of engaged, applied, and activist research at the CUNY Graduate Center, The Public Scholarship Practice Space (PS2) advances institutional and civic transformation through publicly engaged scholarship.
PS2, housed at the CUNY GC's Center for the Humanities, is committed to supporting four areas of knowledge production:
a Doctoral Certificate Program in Public Scholarship (to launch in Fall 2025)
Summer Research Fellowships for Emerging Public Scholars, with generous funding from the Provost’s Office
Outreach and Engagement
Dissertation Innovation Lab
PS2 is led by Faculty Coordinator Prithi Kanakamedala and Presidential Research Fellow in Public Scholarship Dasharah Green, with support from Kendra Sullivan, Director, Center for the Humanities, and Dr. Monica W. Varsanyi, Interim Associate Provost for Academic Affairs and Dean for Humanities and Social Sciences, Provost’s Office.
Questions about PS2 can be directed to [email protected]. For news, updates, opportunities and events and more from PS2, join our newsletter here.
PS2 is now on Instagram as well, click here to follow us at @cunygcps2.
PS2 Leadership Team
Prithi Kanakamedala (she/ her/ hers) Faculty Coordinator. Prithi is an Associate Professor of History at Bronx Community College CUNY, and a faculty member in the MALS program at CUNY Graduate Center. She is an active public historian and has worked with a number of cultural organizations across the city. Prithi’s work examines the archives, material culture, and community-building, race, and citizenship in Brooklyn and New York’s 19th-century free Black communities.
“As a public scholar, I am honored to be in community with colleagues at CUNY Graduate Center and beyond who are already doing inspiring work, and of course acknowledge my debt to scholars past and present who have made CUNY Graduate Center and CUNY a center of public scholarship in all its forms.”
—Prithi Kanakamedala, PS2 Faculty Coordinator
Dasharah Green (she/ her/ hers) Presidential Research Fellow, Public Scholarship. Dasharah was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. She uses experiences growing up in her, pre-gentrified, Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood as a backdrop to explore the intersections of Blackness. Her early interests trickled down to inspire her academic career as she went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree in English honors, with a double minor in Africana Studies honors and Political Science, from John Jay College. In May 2020, Dasharah graduated from St. John’s University with a Master’s degree in English. She is currently an adjunct in Baruch College’s Black and Latino/a Studies Department. As a fourth year PhD candidate in the English department, Dasharah is currently working on her dissertation – which explores the genealogy of Black women’s storytelling, from the early 20th century to present day. She is specifically focusing on how these writers contribute to a borderless literary culture and reimagine/rethorize archival materials as a means of storytelling.
“As a graduate researcher, I am interested in creative and innovative methods to make academic work and research public facing, legible, and accessible for diverse communities to engage with. Public scholarship as a field reimagines historical institutional processes of gatekeeping valuable information that can work to (re)inform or improve society.”
—Dasharah Green, Presidential Research Fellow, Public Scholarship
With gratitude to our Advisory Team
- Dr. Ujju Aggarwal, Assistant Professor, Anthropology and Experiential Learning, The New School
- Dr. Dána-Ain Davis, Associate Professor, Anthropology, Psychology, Director and Professor, Women's and Gender Studies, and Director, Center for the Study of Women and Society, CUNY Graduate Center
- Dr. Michelle Fine, Distinguished Professor, Psychology, Urban Education, Liberal Studies, Women's and Gender Studies, American Studies, CUNY Graduate Center
- Kendra Sullivan, Director, Center for the Humanities, CUNY Graduate Center
- Dr. Anne Valk, Professor, History, and Director, American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, CUNY Graduate Center
- Dr. Monica W. Varsanyi, Professor, Earth and Environmental Sciences, International Migration Studies, and Interim Associate Provost for Academic Affairs and Dean for Humanities and Social Sciences, Provost’s Office, CUNY Graduate Center
