Welcome to the Research Justice Shop hop, formerly called the Community-based Research Initiative for Research Justice (NCbRI), located at the Newkirk Center for Science & Society at the University of California, Irvine -land of the Acjachemen and Tongva nations. We are thrilled to formally introduce ourselves on the Newkirk website and, through this post, launch the blog series! We hope that you return often to learn about what we are doing and to get involved. Click here to add your name to our mailing list to receive announcements of Newkirk events, as well as other events of interest.
In 2018 with seed funding from the Newkirk Center for Science & Society, Drs. Victoria Lowerson Bredow and Connie McGuire founded the Community-based Research Initiative, now the Research Justice Shop (RJS). As co-directors, using a Research Justice framework (Data Center, 2013), we teach about, conduct, and study community-based research practices.
We act as a bridge and support between community-based organizations (CBOs) and groups and university-based students, faculty, and staff. We run a year-long fellowship program for graduate students, conduct community-based research in collaboration with local communities, and investigate broad questions about the histories and possibilities for equitable research relationships between university partners and communities working together to solve social and environmental problems.
Why did we create the Research Justice Shop?
UC Irvine students and faculty alike are drawn to engage with communities that are impacted by their research. Community organizations and groups in Orange County and beyond are continuously innovating to address the injustices that they face. Through the Shop, we support the capacity for university partners to collaborate with community organizations and vice versa. The work is grounded in practices and methods of community-based research which, at its core, is a critique of traditional research models that emerge from histories of exploitation. Our work comes out of traditions of Community-based Research and we aim to open up dialogue around the practices and power dynamics in the field (Janes, 2016).
| Research Justice re-imagines research as a collaborative effort that centers the experiences and research needs of those most impacted by our collective social and environmental problems. Research injustices in the U.S. context, and in Orange County in particular, impact communities of color and especially Black and Latinx communities. |
Connie and Victoria have been influenced and inspired by a diverse set of scholars, practitioners, and community members who are working to integrate the efforts of university-based people and community-based organizations and groups to make changes. We have spent the last decade engaging with Orange County communities that are working to address various forms of structural exclusion including gentrification, food insecurity, discriminatory policing, the school-to-prison-to-deportation pipeline, LGBTQI+ student safety, immigrants’ rights, and environmental injustice. Today, in our positions as co-directors, we pay attention to the dynamics at play in community-university engagement critically and with an orientation toward how we can support the community and university to work together towards justice.
RJS’s development:
- In March 2018, we began strategic planning. We read widely in the field of Community-based Research, conducted research about similar initiatives (e.g. UC Davis’ Center for Regional Change), attended conferences such as the Living Knowledge Conference, and developed a strategic plan which included a redesign of the Newkirk Center for Science & Society’s Graduate Student Fellowship Program into an early career graduate student training fellowship.
- In October 2018, we started a 14-month research project conducting Community Listening Sessions about water-related strengths and needs in the Santa Ana watershed, the findings of which contributed to this report and these info-graphics, which we shared back with participants.
- In January 2019, we launched an 8-month pilot of the early career graduate student training fellowship program with 4 graduate students who worked in teams of two with a local community-based organization. We also piloted the Research Justice curriculum via 6 workshops with students from across campus.
- In September 2019, we launched the inaugural year of the 1- year fellowship program, which 8 UCI graduate students, from 6 schools across campus, completed.
- 22 graduate students from 9 schools completed a certificate in Community-based Research through the 2019-2020 Research Justice workshop series.
- In September 2020, we launched the second year of the 1-year fellowship program with 10 UCI graduate students from 9 schools across campus working on 5 projects.
- We began our second year of the Research Justice workshop series and certificate in Research Justice.
- In July 2020, we initiated a research project titled, Californian Essential Workers’ COVID-19 Stories with funding from UCI’s Office of Inclusive Excellence.
- 17 graduate students from 9 schools completed a certificate in Community-based Research through the 2020-2021 Research Justice workshop series.
What you can expect from this website:
- Monthly posts about Research Justice Shop activities
- Stories about our collaboration with community partners
- Posts by graduate student fellows
- Tools, resources, and other relevant content
- Information about events including the Research Justice Workshop Series and Certificate
- Information about the Newkirk Graduate Student Fellowship
Thank you for visiting the website and we hope to see you soon!
Victoria & Connie
Co-directors
Research Justice Shop
Newkirk Center for Science & Society
University of California, Irvine
Land of the Acjachemen and Tongva nations
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