Maggie Melo
Assistant Professor and Director of Equity in the Making Lab
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The preliminary findings for the first phase of the research program, “Equity in the Making: Investigating Spatial Arrangements of Makerspaces and Their Impact on Diverse User Populations” are explored. Librarians and information professionals continue to navigate a persistent challenge in their makerspaces: an underrepresentation of undergraduates from marginalized communities. The aim of this 5-year research program is to examine the relationship between the spatial arrangement of academic makerspaces and the diverse user communities it seeks to attract. The scope of this briefing focuses on the initial findings from a set of interviews that asked participants to describe the defining features (sight, sound, and scent) of a conventional academic makerspace. This research has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER program.
