CRL’s Climate Justice Scholars Program creates opportunities through formal and informal events, such as an annual research symposium, quarterly fellows lunches, moderated panels, and catalytic funding that allows path breaking interdisciplinary research to initially get off the ground.
Program Leadership
Faculty Director, Sikina Jinnah, Professor of Environmental Studies and CRL Associate Director
Program Description
Developing effective and just climate change solutions, which do not merely reproduce the existing drivers of climate change and injustice, demands radical interdisciplinarity (King 2019). Radical interdisciplinarity brings diverse fields and epistemologies into community and conversation to jointly define problems and co-create concepts, research questions, and methods that transgress traditional disciplinary divides.
Radical interdisciplinary research requires time to exchange ideas, while also building community and mutual trust among scholars who may not otherwise have much opportunity to interact. Our Climate Justice Fellows Program (CJFP) creates such opportunities. Through formal and informal gatherings, interdisciplinary scholars are invited to build a trusted and supportive learning community, where they can think creatively about their own research, push the boundaries of their work, and reflect on the transformative elements needed to realize radical interdisciplinary collaborations.
Program Specifics
CJFP serves scholars across all five divisions, focusing on those early in their careers and underrepresented in their fields. During the pilot year (AY24-25) of this three-year program, a small cohort of fellows and CRL-affiliated faculty will gather monthly over a meal to present and discuss fellows’ ongoing research. We will intentionally center thoughtful, kind, caring, and constructive conversations and feedback. We will also take field trips to experience one another’s research worlds. Depending on fellows’ interests these trips might include visiting the UCO Lick Observatory, art exhibitions, food festivals, museums, farms, and/or scientific laboratories. Our goal is to foster the types of relationships and interdisciplinary collaborations we want to see within our departments, universities, and beyond.
Fellows will also receive mentoring support for grant writing and merit review.
CJFP seeks to be adaptable to fellows’ interests and needs. During the pilot year, we will survey fellows about their research needs and respond to those needs in the development of programmatics for years two and three. Fellows will also have the opportunity to shape the future of CJFP by collectively imagining a community event for year two, such as inviting a guest scholar or activist they admire and with whom they wish to connect. In year two of the program, fellows will have access to catalytic grants focused on interdisciplinary climate justice collaborations. The results from these collaborative projects will be presented at campus-wide convening on climate justice research in year three.