The Appalachian Justice Research Center
Our Work
The AJRC houses projects centered on specific research themes derived from regional community-articulated needs and priorities. Understanding that these issues require long-term collaborative work, our commitments in research are not semester-long nor time limited projects, but rather focal commitments and problems that we tackle piece-by-piece across time, projects, classrooms, and communities. Four themes have emerged through community discussions as our current focal points, often overlapping across projects.
Our Research Themes
Community Safety
Appalachian communities are working with AJRC faculty and students to find innovative ways to build meaningful forms of community safety.
Land Justice
In Appalachia, the history, use, and ownership of land is central to achieving a just transition to an economy that ensures Appalachian communities can thrive.
Housing and Community Stability
In both rural and urban areas, housing stability is key to thriving family and community life.
Health Justice
Access to healthcare is severely limited in the region by a wide variety of factors, including geography, legal and regulatory obstacles, and chronic underinvestment.
Output and Deliverables
Our dedication to developing community research insists that our work be accessible to and actionable by the community through data deliverables that include and exceed the academic model: we write traditional and high quality scholarship and we create deliverables like open data repositories; digital public facing spaces, maps, and data dashboards; justice curricula for schools, workplaces, and governance; podcasts and media platforms; and so much more. We aim to provide a pipeline of research into and out of communities.
Research Support
The AJRC is dedicated to amplifying the reach of research for community, faculty, and students. Our goal is to funnel robust and world class research into clear deliverables and innovative solutions. We do so by bringing exemplary combinations of transdisciplinary faculty, students, and directly impacted community members together around the key problems in the region. We have in-house grant advising with grant and funding lists that support the mission of the AJRC, we facilitate IRB preparation for AJRL projects, we host public facing digital data repositories through a community archive, and our curriculum specializes in on-the-ground community justice research experiences for students.
About Community Collaborative Research
Community collaborative research is based upon the participatory action research (PAR) model. PAR is a collective process of investigation, empowerment, and action. The people most affected by the problem of study are the key experts in their own experiences, present across the research process, investigating and analyzing the issues, and ultimately acting together to bring about meaningful, long-term solutions. PAR has an important legacy in the Appalachian South in the work of former UT sociologist John Gaventa and the legacy and ongoing work of civil rights icon Highlander Research and Education Center.
“It’s important as a lawyer to be able to talk to people, having no idea what their life is like, and be able to empathize, sympathize, and connect. I can bridge those gaps a lot easier now, and I feel like I’m going to take that away for the rest of my life.”
Nick Slusher
Student in the Appalachian Justice Research Lab