Two CoAA Faculty Receive Gambrell Fellowships
Assistant Professor of Architecture Nathaniel Elberfeld and Associate Professor of Dance Tamara Williams have been named 2026 Gambrell Faculty Fellows. Awarded annually by the Charlotte Urban Institute with support from The Gambrell Foundation, Gambrell Fellowships fund projects that address the question “what does it mean to live a good life?” in the Charlotte region. Elberfeld and Williams are among 10 faculty in the seventh cohort of Gambrell Faculty Fellows.
Elberfeld’s project, “Designing for Awe: An Exhibition of Housing Prototypes for an Evolving Charlotte,” is prompted by Charlotte’s rapid growth and subsequent housing shortage, which has resulted in “a proliferation of quick-to-design and cheap-to-build housing units with little differentiation or consideration of longevity, durability, or beauty,” he wrote in his abstract. His fellowship will fund the production of a public exhibition and online catalog of original creative work “that serves as a platform to inspire collective imagination about the future of urban development and aspirational housing alternatives for the city amid the call for significant increases in housing supply, particularly for the community’s missing middle housing,” wrote Asha Ellison for the Charlotte Urban Institute. The exhibition will manifest research of the region’s history of textile production, which Elberfeld has carried out with graduate students in the School of Architecture.
“I’m not trying to solve the city’s housing challenges,” Elberfeld told the Urban Institute. ”Homes are being built – and that’s a good thing! I only hope to expand people’s thinking about what is possible beyond the regulations that exist.”
In her project “Embodied Resilience: African Diaspora Dance for Women’s Health and Community in Charlotte,” Williams will work to “heal, reaffirm identity and build community among Black women in Charlotte” through teaching traditional Black and African diasporic dances. The project will examine a wide range of health impacts, focusing on mental health issues among a group of women ages 18 to 25 and physical health issues among a group of women ages 32 to 45.
“I’ve been working in the Tuckaseegee community as well as other communities around Charlotte for years [and] have listened to women talk about the disparities between their knowledge of their own cultural movement practices due to eradication and education systems, and how those practices might ameliorate their physical health and mental health,” Williams told the Urban Institute. “We are [also] working with local healthcare providers that will meet with the women and share resources to continue their healthcare practices in hopes to provide sustainable practices in our communities.”
Learn more about these projects and the full 2026 Gambrell Faculty Fellows cohort in this Charlotte Urban Institute article.