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Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice

What We Do 

Rutgers, Research, and Global Racial Justice

Making visible a coherent, university-wide strategy regarding research activity in global racial justice.

Spanning Rutgers' diverse campuses situated in three major New Jersey cities, from the large comprehensive research university in New Brunswick; to the deeply community-engaged urban research university and anchor institution in Newark, New Jersey's largest city; to the close-knit community of the small urban research university and anchor institution in Camden.

Projects, Research, Seminars & Public Engagement

From long-term research examining racist social policy across centuries, to highly-focused seminars for undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows, to performances and exhibits featuring the works of influential and emerging Black artists, the institute applies its humanistic approach to social and racial justice in shaping engagement with the academy at large, the classroom, and the general public.

Engraving of Ignatius Sancho

Art, Culture, and Public Humanities

Through film, music, archival sources, and literary texts, researchers explore the role of the arts in expressing the pain and suffering of incarceration and social death, and the power of cultural resistance against discrimination, dehumanization, and enslavement.

Raised Fist

Educational Justice: Grants and Projects

Educational Justice grants support research activity in the racial and social justice space across Rutgers’ campuses. Directors focus on projects rather than one-time academic events. This structure of projects provides vehicles for faculty across the campuses to find in the Institute a different kind of space, one that can move more nimbly, foster collaborations, pilot experimental programs, and move between the academy and the public or the academy and surrounding communities.

Scholarship

Interdisciplinary Seminars in Social Justice

These interdisciplinary seminars focus on the struggle for global, racial, and social justice through such topics as public arts, education, health, public policy, social justice, and criminal justice. Seminars can be short (two months), medium (one semester), or long (year-long) and can be campus-based, cross-campus, or universitywide. Proposals that encourage and include participation from graduate students and other Rutgers constituencies beyond tenured faculty will be given special consideration.

Community Farming

Research Groups and Projects

Projects and initiatives housed administratively at or affiliated with ISGRJ contribute to the institute’s overall direction and vision regarding such areas of inquiry as K–12 education, social justice, public policy, public health, criminal justice, public arts, and pedagogy.

global_initiatives

Global Initiatives

A robust portfolio of partnerships with humanists -- in Central, Sub-Saharan, and Western Africa, Asia and the Asian Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean --  facilitates a number of important conversations and programs on global racial justice in specific topic areas such as: critical AI and African Natural Language Processing; race, health, and the Humanities, the uses, meanings, and availability of water resources world-wide,  and the training of young people in social justice pedagogy.

ISGRJ Website: A Collaboration

In producing the ISGRJ website, the institute has partnered with the communications professionals in the Rutgers Department of University Communications and Marketing.