2026 CCSP Summer Social Justice Grant

2026 Grantees

Death by Incarceration

Death by Incarceration is a narrative-based film and archive, built to uncover the routes and roots of racism, education, geography and incarceration on Long Island. This project is also a platform for currently incarcerated peoples to regain agency through sharing stories that have been authored by them. DBI works to humanize incarcerated peoples through media that exposes how systemic mishandlings, geographic terrorism, and educational disparities run parallel, creating a shared culture of anti-Black violence displayed in daily life. In collaboration with Amarachi Marshall, Destiny Gbor, and Peyton Edwards. Angelina Mancini is an Undergraduate student double majoring in Africana Studies and Anthropology.

Angelina Goura Mancini

Home After Stroke on Long Island: A Community-Based Stroke Recovery Resource

Home After Stroke on Long Island focuses on the challenges that both stroke survivors and caregivers face after hospital discharge, such as transportation, medical literacy, language barriers, access to local resources, caregiver burden, rehabilitation, and follow-up care. Through interviews with healthcare and community stakeholders, common gaps in post-stroke support and recovery were identified and analyzed. These findings were then used to create a practical, easy-to-understand recovery planner for stroke survivors and caregivers that brings important information and Long Island resources together in one place. Neha Yalamanchi is an undergraduate student majoring in Biology with a minor in Health, Medicine, and Society.

Neha Yalamanchi

Disentangling Stories of Violence and Mental Illness through Oral History

The project interrogates the troubled history of New York's forensic psychiatric facilities through the oral testimonies of current and formerly incarcerated, neurodivergent people, their families, and activists. Their stories reveal how forensic carceral spaces, created to provide specialized support for incarcerated people with psychiatric disability, often compound illness by subjecting people to indefinite sentencing and solitary confinement. Their stories also highlight the incredible work that is being done to transform New York’s criminal legal system. Megan Knighton is a PhD student in History.

Megan Knighton

Towards a Waste-Free Community: Quantifying Waste Production at Stony Brook University to Establish a Zero-Waste Plan

In pursuit of environmental justice within the Brookhaven community, I led a waste audit across campus to rigorously assess waste production at SBU and use this data to inform solutions for reducing our trash. This project categorized and quantified the waste generated at various spaces within the Melville Library and followed guidance from the EPA, SBU Waste Data & Analysis Center, and BLARG. Julian Maceren is a PhD student in Chemistry.

Julian Maceren

2025 Grantees

Undergraduate Summer Grants

$500/each

"Mental Health ToolBox" | Kamilah Pasha

This project addresses mental health disparities in under-resourced communities by providing Classroom Mental Health Toolboxes to 15–25 classrooms to a Long Island elementary school. Each kit includes tools and materials to support emotional regulation for students, along with take-home resources for parents. Partnerships with local organizations will help expand the project’s reach. This work integrates social work training with a long-term commitment to advancing equitable, community-based mental health care for children.

"Indigenous land and cultural sovereignty" | Merica Griffin

This project combines academic research and creative work focused on Indigenous land and cultural sovereignty. The first component supports ongoing research on public policy and environmental justice in Latin America, contributing to manuscript development for future publication. The second uses environmental artivism through photography to document Indigenous knowledge and highlight Stony Brook University’s location on Setalcott Nation land. With grant support, the project aims to advance scholarship on Indigenous land rights while fostering campus engagement through visual storytelling.

Graduate Summer Grants

$750/each

"Using EEG to examine how neural processing of social rejection is influenced by cultural background" | Clinical Psychology Grad Student

This study examines how race-related social rejection may contribute to mental health disparities by investigating its neural correlates using reward positivity (RewP), an EEG-based marker linked to depression and social processing. By analyzing RewP responses to same-race vs. other-race social interactions, the project aims to better understand how racial discrimination translates into stress and depression risk. This research represents an early step toward identifying culturally sensitive neurobehavioral markers of depression in minoritized populations.

"Settler Colonialism, Ecocide, and the Climate Crisis in Occupied Palestine" | Ariek Norford

This project contributes to a review paper, Settler Colonialism, Ecocide, and the Climate Crisis in Occupied Palestine, for Social Work in Public Health. Focusing on the environmental justice impacts of Israel’s occupation, it examines how land confiscation, habitat destruction, and ecological degradation contribute to health disparities for Palestinians. Drawing on expertise in ecology and farming communities, the research will synthesize findings on olive grove destruction and afforestation. This work also represents a first step in integrating academic research on community-driven conservation with social justice advocacy for the Arab community, building skills to bridge research and practice.