Instructor: Professor Janine Al-Aseer (Theory and Practice in Teacher Education)
Course description: This course examines the factors influencing youth retention in Morgan County, TN through direct engagement with key stakeholders. Students will participate in structured listening sessions with educational leaders and community representatives while also facilitating discussions with young adults about their lived experiences and future trajectories. With support from the Morgan County Community Vibrancy group, students will conduct qualitative interviews, analyze data, and assess the broader social and economic impacts on individuals and communities. Project deliverables will include a presentation with our community partners of the information and a data report for the community. Course materials will cover the history of Appalachia, resource extraction, youth retention and migration, economic and social policies in rural communities, and the intersecting roles of tourism and education in shaping rural development.

Instructor: Professor Lindsay Shade (Sociology)
Course description: Students in this lab will collaborate with the Appalachian Rekindling Project, Appalachian Land Study Collective, and Building Community Not Prisons Coalition to research the role of land ownership in the increasing number of rural prisons, especially in previously mined areas. We will also engage with community land use planning for land recently acquired by the Appalachian Rekindling Project (a region-wide initiative led by Native women) to rematriate land at the site of a proposed federal prison on a former strip mine. Students in the lab will learn about and research the history of land ownership and extraction in the region, as well as the role of land governance in efforts to transition away from extractive systems. Secondly, students will learn about and research the relationships between urban change, land governance, and patterns of policing and incarceration in areas that “send” individuals for incarceration in Appalachia.   

Students will work on project activities in small teams alongside the course instructor and community partners based on interests and skills. Activities may include collaboration with community organizations, formerly incarcerated individuals and their families, artists, and legal experts to review responses to Freedom of Information Act requests, land records, and newspaper archives, as well as creation of public materials, comparative policy analysis, and research papers. We will develop an interactive website and mapping tool to share our findings publicly. The course may also include occasional travel to communities that host prisons in West Virginia, Kentucky, and/or Virginia for qualitative interviews and/or community meetings.

Instructor: Nikki Luke (Geography)
Course description: The Fall 2025 “Securing Local Benefits on Energy and Infrastructure Projects” section of the Appalachian Justice Research Lab (AJRL) will partner with East Tennessee Jobs with Justice (ETJwJ) to understand strategies to secure local investment from energy and infrastructure projects in Tennessee. ETJwJ is working as part of the statewide coalition Tennessee for All on an industrial democracy project that was started to empower workers in Tennessee to develop pathways towards good jobs and community benefits associated with clean energy and infrastructure investments in the state. In this course, students will collect and analyze data on current and planned clean energy and infrastructure projects in Tennessee; document how public investment is used to support these projects; and engage in a legal, landscape analysis to evaluate mechanisms deployed across the U.S. to secure community benefit and good neighbor agreements on infrastructure projects. We will work closely with ETJwJ and Tennessee for All coalition partners to develop practicable tools to communicate opportunities for infrastructure projects and ensure worker safety, engagement, and responsiveness to worker and community concerns. 

Instructor: Dr. Lesly-Marie Buer (Medical Anthropology)
Course description: The Fall 2025 “Harm Reduction during Pregnancy” section of the Appalachian Justice Research Lab will work with Hellbender Harm Reduction to examine access to medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) during pregnancy in Appalachia. We will engage in an analysis of patient, provider, and pharmacist rights and responsibilities in relation to MOUD access, prescribing, and distribution. A research project will focus on a phone audit that examines the practices of pharmacists in filling, or refusing to fill, prescriptions for the MOUD medication buprenorphine during pregnancy. Hellbender Harm Reduction has requested several deliverables, including a publishable paper and more accessible community fact sheets discussing findings for a variety of audiences, including people who use drugs, harm reduction providers, prescribers, and pharmacists. 

All students will learn about the history and current implementation of harm reduction in Appalachia, the intersections of harm reduction and pregnancy-related care, and the barriers to evidence-based care. Students will have different roles in the section, including the following focus areas: legal analysis of access to and dispensing of medication, editing a literature review for a publishable paper, data collection, survey data analysis, and translating data analysis for different deliverables, including a publishable paper and fact sheets for various communities. Course content will include material on substance use, stigma, and structural violence.