Research Justice at the Intersections (RJI) is an interdisciplinary research group that fosters social justice-oriented research and groundbreaking critical analysis. RJI grew out of the Mills College Ethnic Studies Department’s involvement in hosting the National Association for Ethnic Studies’ (NAES) conference “Research as Ceremony: Decolonizing Ethnic Studies” in 2014. The program is coordinated by a faculty steering committee, chaired by NAES 2014 co-chair and Mills Provost Chinyere Oparah.
Coined by DataCenter, an Oakland-based community research organization, research justice “is a strategic framework that seeks to transform structural inequities in research… [it] is achieved when marginalized communities are recognized as experts, and reclaim, own and wield all forms of knowledge and information.”
RJI encourages scholars to consider new forms of knowledge production that challenge traditional research hierarchies, mobilize the leadership of those directly affected by the phenomena we investigate, and acknowledge and engage subaltern ways of knowing. RJI supports research that centers an intersectional analysis of race, class, gender, sexuality, religion and nation, within a context of globalization and transnationality.
Chinyere Oparah, RJI Director, Provost, Professor of Ethnic Studies
Diane Cady, Associate Professor of English
Maggie Hunter, Associate Professor of Sociology
Priya Kandaswamy, Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Gender Studies
Pedro Nava, Assistant Professor, Educational Leadership.
Chinyere Oparah, RJI Director, rji@mills.edu
Ethnic Studies
Mills College
5000 MacArthur Blvd.
Oakland, CA 94613