Bi'Anncha Andrews

Bi'Anncha Andrews (she/her) is a Licensed Social Worker and current Doctoral Candidate in the Urban and Regional Planning and Design program at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Her research investigates the impacts of gentrification and displacement on low-income and middle-class, African American communities, while centering the intersecting roles that race, class, and gender have played in shaping neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage with limited access to effective social services and social support networks. More specifically, her work pays particular attention to the disruptions it causes for Black Women who are displaced from public housing projects. Her dissertation investigates how Black Women navigate their transition out of gentrifying neighborhoods, and how they begin to rebuild their social service and neighborhood-based support networks in their new environments. In doing so, it seeks to provide academics, practitioners and policy makers a foundation for strategizing on ways to improve urban redevelopment and restoration practices, social service distribution and support network access to account for the losses that vulnerable populations often suffer as a result of exclusionary development.

Bi'Anncha has taught Advanced Planning Courses at the University of Maryland including Community Development which she served as the lead instructor; and the Advanced Community Planning Studio course which she served as the Teaching Assistant with Dr. Clara Irazabal.

In addition to her academic work, Bi’Anncha worked extensively as a front line, licensed Social Worker with the Compass Program at the Catholic Charities Archdiocese of Washington. As a Compass Partner, Bi’Anncha worked with adults, families, and communities in environments in which people need support in managing and navigating some of life's most challenging circumstances. She has extensive training in nonviolent crisis intervention, trauma-informed care, solution-focused therapy, and community organizing.

The purpose of her work has been to have a positive effect on the social and physical environment in which people live their lives, bridge the divide between academia and local neighborhood-based planning, and influence policy and practices that bring equity, access and enhancement to the quality of life found in low-income communities of color.

RESEARCH INTERESTS/SPECIALIZATIONS:

Residential and Commercial Gentrification, Anti-Displacement, Dispossession Public Housing Demolition, Residential Segregation, Concentrated Poverty,  Black Feminist Theory, Access to Social Services and Social Support Networks, Restorative and Reparative Planning Practices