Black Midwest Initiative (BMI) Summer Institute

The Black Midwest Initiative (BMI) at the University of Illinois Chicago invites applications from early-career scholars, artists, and community organizers to its 2025 Summer Institute on Environmental Justice. This convening will bring together 15 participants, designated as BMI Fellows, who are doing work around environmental justice issues affecting Black people and communities within the Midwest and Rust Belt regions of the United States for a week-long series of discussions, presentations, and workshops with leading figures in the field. In alignment with environmental sociologist and Institute facilitator David Pellow, we conceive of environmental racism as a “form of violent control over bodies, space, and knowledge systems.” Accordingly, we define the parameters of the environmental justice issues applicants might propose to address broadly—from urban agriculture, toxic emissions, natural disasters, and climate change to carcerality, housing instability, residential segregation, community health and wellness, and beyond.

After the conclusion of the Institute, each Fellow will also work to develop a project, individually or in collaboration with one or more other Fellows, that will be incorporated into the Black Midwest Justice Hub (the HUB)—a digital platform we will launch in the fall of 2026 that will serve as a resource repository for the BMI Environmental Justice Collaboratory, a set of environmental justice courses that will be taught across multiple midwestern colleges and universities during the 2026-27 academic year. HUB projects may ultimately take any number of forms that can be accessed digitally, including but not limited to short films, virtual exhibits, traditional academic papers, storymaps, graphic notes, sound recordings, oral histories, interviews, and introductory essays or lectures.

See the BMI Website for more details, including how to apply.

Apply before the deadline on March 7, 2025.