The Appalachian Justice Research Center (AJRC) is a transdisciplinary research and training collaborative co-sponsored by the College of Arts & Sciences and the College of Law. The Center is dedicated to advancing community visions for a more just and equitable Appalachia and the Mountain South.
In keeping with the university’s land grant mission, we leverage university resources to address urgent, protracted, and historically under-addressed issues in the expansive region. Combining policy development and advocacy, the AJRC will work towards producing tangible solutions to seemingly intractable problems in rural and urban Appalachian communities. Our work will include the creation of community archives, oral histories, curricula, and media platforms – as well as standard research outputs such as research white papers, articles, and books.
We use a community-driven, non-extractive research model: aka, we’re focused on research with and for communities, not research about communities. AJRC projects are centered around community priorities and legacies of resilience, specifically those communities most impacted by histories of poverty and violence. Our first wave of Community Research Collaboratives will focus on four themes:
Community Safety
Land Justice
Housing & Community Stability
Health Justice
“Being part of this program is not only one of the things I am most proud of from my graduate school experience, but also one of the best experiences I have had in graduate school. Crucially, our project began and ended in collaboration with partner agencies and activist organizations in the Knoxville area: their perspectives shaped our research and our research directly served their advocacy.”
—David Strickler, PhD Student in History