Her research is often change-oriented, meaning she collaborates with community partners to identify opportunities for engaged and integrated sustainable community development that creates knowledge to serve both local and educational communities. She is also a co-founder and the faculty director of the UVA Democracy Initiative Center for the Redress of Inequity through Community-Engaged Scholarship (aka The Equity Center). Wilson teaches required classes in the MUEP program, including Methods of Community Engagement and Research and Planning Theory and Practice, as well as interdisciplinary electives such as Climate Justice in Cities and Ecological Democracy. In her classes, students grapple with complex socio-environmental problems like climate change and structural inequities, and develop not only technical skills, but also skills of cultural competency and empathy. In Ecological Democracy, students work with a local community group to apply their skills in collaboration with the local knowledge of their traditionally underserved partners to propose co-designed ideas to community-driven projects.īrown Wilson seeks to understand how social values, specifically regarding ecology and equity, are coded into the built world.

Her work investigates the role of codes (e.g. Building, land use, and societal) and coalitions working in the service of more resilient communities.

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