Weiss Urban Livability Fellows

The Graduate School is pleased to welcome the incoming 2022 cohort of its Weiss Urban Livability Fellowship. The one-year fellowship supports talented graduate students with an interest in urban livability. It also provides funding, learning opportunities and practical experience.

Fellows design a community project that impacts urban livability in Chapel Hill. Fellows also take part in discussion forums, guest lectures and mentoring.

The award is endowed through generous gifts from Professors Emeriti Charles and Shirley Weiss.

Zari Taylor is a fourth-year doctoral student in the Department of Communication, housed in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her research is in the intersection of race, beauty capital, social media and algorithms. Specifically, she looks at techno-minstrelsy on TikTok and the ways in which influencers are racialized and gendered in particular ways.

Nora Abbott is a master’s degree student in the Department of Environmental Sciences and The Weiss Urban Livability Fellowship supports graduate students and their community projects in Chapel HillEngineering, housed in the Gillings School of Global Public Health. She is interested in environmental modeling, climate change and global health. Abbott has previously studied biosand filters as a water remediation method and air quality and related health with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. She has also worked with the Royal Danish Consulate General and the Permanent Mission of Denmark to the United Nations as part of the Greening of the Blue Initiative.

Meet the rest of the 2022 Weiss Urban Livability Fellows…Opens in new window