Postdoctoral Fellow
Nohely Alvarez, PhD
Georgetown University
Nohely's Story
Nohely Alvarez graduated with her PhD in Urban and Regional Planning and Design from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her dissertation, titled “Everyday Economies: Narratives and Negotiations of Cultural Economic Practices in Langley Park, Maryland,” focused on how Langley Park epitomizes everyday economies. This framework considers community and diverse, often invisible economies, along with the daily lives of informal vendors, translocal and microbusinesses, and hybrid economies. She investigated how economic survival and networking are integrated into the community's daily practices, social relations, and spatial negotiations that transcend geographical boundaries despite living in a landscape of increased marginalization.
Nohely's Research
Networks of Care: Health, Resilience, and Social Justice in an Immigrant Community
Through fieldwork, she found that Central American women vendors in Langley Park create systems and networks of translocal collective care, resilience, and economic agency. While many of the vendors have had to endure traumatic and strenuous experiences to migrate to the United States, they continue to employ mechanisms of care for residents in the US and abroad by conversing with them and exchanging information about their daily lives, creating a sort of trauma bonding.
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This project will seek to broaden our understanding on how immigrant women in Langley Park continue to navigate systemic barriers while understanding how their healing and health networks are shaped not just individually but within interpersonal, community, and institutional relations through digital storytelling and photovoice methods. She will explore: How are the informal and formal health networks created, and what role do they play in informing and creating alternatives to health systems? What is the role of space and place in marginalizing or limiting access to better social services and healthcare? This project offers a healing-centered framework for urban planning, focusing on the strengths and needs of vulnerable immigrant communities.