Speaker series
The Real-World Perspectives on Poverty Solutions speaker series introduces key issues regarding the causes and consequences of poverty through an in-person and virtual lecture series featuring experts in policy and practice from across the nation.
Our goal is to help build a broad community of learners to engage in these issues together.
This series is free and open to the public as well as being a one-credit course for U-M students (SW 503). In-person talks include coffee, cookies, and the chance to ask the speakers questions, or you can watch the livestream on YouTube. Follow Poverty Solutions on LinkedIn to join the conversation, and sign up for our newsletter to get weekly reminders for each talk.
Fall 2026 Speaker Series Lineup
Friday, Oct. 2 - Lessons Learned from Designing and Evaluating Ann Arbor's Guaranteed Income Pilot
Kristin Seefeldt is the faculty director of Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, and she also is an associate professor of social work and public policy. Her primary research interests lie in exploring how low-income individuals understand their situations, particularly around issues related to work and economic well-being. She is the principal investigator administering and studying the Guaranteed Income to Grow Ann Arbor (GIG A2) pilot program.
Cosponsored by the University of Michigan School of Social Work.
Friday, Oct. 9 - Rebuilding Democracy - special time & place
** 6 to 7:30 p.m. at Robertson Auditorium at the Ross School **
Osita Nwanevu is a contributing editor at The New Republic and a columnist for The Guardian. His new book, The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding, asks who the American founding actually empowered, who it left out, and what a truly democratic America would require.
Nwanevu will be in conversation with Elizabeth Anderson, the John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at U-M and a MacArthur Fellow. Her books, including Private Government and Hijacked, examine how work, markets, and power shape democratic life.
Cosponsored by U-M Philosophy; Rackham Graduate School; Energy Club at Ross; History; Business+Impact at Ross; Wallace House; Institute for the Humanities; English Language & Literature; Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy; Center for Positive Organizations; Center for Political Studies; Political Science; Michigan Law; Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE); Science, Technology, and Society; Science, Technology, and Public Policy at the Ford School; Erb Institute; Sociology; Net Impact; and the Institute for Healthcare Policy & Innovation.
See more details about the event schedule
Friday, Oct. 16 - Beyond Silos: An Inter-Institutional Framework for Understanding Poverty and Advancing Social Change
Kess Ballentine is an assistant professor at Wayne State University School of Social Work and a research affiliate with Labor@Wayne, Detroit PEER, and the Center for Gender and Sexuality. Drawing on professional experience in child welfare, labor organizing, and social services, her community-engaged research examines how labor policy and working conditions shape the well-being of low-wage workers and their families. Her work on job quality, unionization, and workplace policy has informed municipal policy in Detroit, been featured in national media, and been published in leading journals, including Health Affairs and Social Services Review.
Cosponsored by the University of Michigan Center for Innovation in Detroit.
Friday, Oct. 23 - cityLAB's Innovations for Affordable Housing
Dana Cuff engages spatial justice and cultural studies of architecture as a teacher, scholar, practitioner, and activist. Her leadership in urban innovation is widely recognized both in the U.S. and abroad. The lab's "housing first" research demonstrates that affordable, well-designed housing and neighborhoods are attainable foundations of equitable cities. cityLAB has developed sustainable, high-performance, low-cost housing prototypes for infill sites ranging from backyards to schoolyards. Since 2013, Cuff has led a cross-disciplinary team at UCLA with a substantial multi-year award from The Mellon Foundation for the "Urban Humanities Initiative." UHI offers students from architecture, urban studies, and the humanities a radical platform for crossdisciplinary, impactful, urban scholarship and action.
Cosponsored by U-M's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
Friday, Oct. 30 - Designing for Dignity: Strengthening Food Assistance Amid Policy Threats
Kate Bauer is a professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and director of the newly established Institute for Food, Nutrition, and Health Policy (IFNHP) at U-M. Her research focuses on the social influences on children's eating, with particular attention to supporting effective parenting and healthy home food environments. Understanding the causes and consequences of food insecurity has been a consistent thread throughout her work, given the physical, mental, and emotional strain it places on parents and children.
Bauer will be in conversation with Taylor Moore, director of Food Rescue at Goodwill Northern Michigan and a member of the Operating Committee of the Northwest Food Coalition. Moore's work focuses on reducing food waste and advancing equitable food access through community organizing and systems change approaches. Over the past decade, he and his colleagues have expanded consistent, year-round fruit and vegetable availability from three Northwest Food Coalition pantries to all 37. Active in food system networks at the regional, state, and national levels, Moore has contributed to research incorporating dignity and democratic decision-making practices in food assistance program design.
Cosponsored by U-M School of Public Health and the Institute for Food, Nutrition, and Health Policy.
Friday, Nov. 13 - Cash Plus Psychosocial Interventions for Economic Mobility
Catherine Thomas is an assistant professor of psychology and of organizational studies at the University of Michigan. She integrates the insights of social psychology, lens of cultural psychology, and tools of behavioral science to examine and intervene upon psychosocial drivers of poverty and inequality in the U.S. and around the globe. In particular, her work interrogates relationships among agency, dignity, and economic mobility. In this work, she conducts lab and field experiments across diverse low-income contexts, including in the U.S., sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia, and often through interdisciplinary collaborations and partnerships with nonprofits and governments. Her work has been published in journals including Nature and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and in media outlets including Time and Foreign Affairs.
Cosponsored by U-M Psychology.
Friday, Nov. 20 - The Importance of Research and Data for Policy and Social Change - special time & place
**1:30 p.m. at U-M School of Social Work, ECC room**
Poverty Solutions panel moderated by Faculty Director Kristin Seefeldt, with panelists:
- Founding Poverty Solutions Faculty Director Luke Shaefer, who now is the City of Detroit's chief executive of health, human services, and poverty solutions;
- Erin Frisch, senior deputy director of the Economic Stability Administration at Michigan Department of Health and Human Services; and
- Zachary Rowe, executive director of Friends of Parkside in Detroit.
This panel will be part of a celebration of the 10-year anniversary of Poverty Solutions at U-M; additional details on the celebration to come.
Watch videos of past speakers
Poverty Solutions has run the fall speaker series and related course since 2018.
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