Hilary Malson, a doctoral student in urban planning at UCLA Luskin, has been awarded a three-year Ford Foundation predoctoral fellowship to support her study of race, space and community development in American exurbs. In her current research, Malson draws from the wider fields of diaspora studies and black geographies to explore how scattered black and brown communities navigate the expanded regional geographies of everyday life. The Ford Foundation honor “is testament to Hilary’s rigor as a scholar and recognition of her insistence that such scholarship be forged in solidarity with communities facing displacement and erasure,” said Ananya Roy, director of the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin, where Malson is a graduate student researcher. Malson holds a B.A. in the growth and structure of cities from Haverford College in Pennsylvania and an MSc in urbanization and development from the London School of Economics, where she earned the dissertation prize for her research on insurgent planning and spatial politics in a majority-minority Virginia suburb. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine awards the Ford Foundation Fellowships to increase diversity among university faculties and encourage professors to use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students. Of the 71 national predoctoral fellowships announced this year, six were awarded to UCLA students.