About
The Health & Justice Applied Research Collective is a community providing support for students and early-career researchers to engage in knowledge mobilization, program and policy development, social justice action, community leadership, and interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral networking. All activities are grounded in a shared commitment to social justice, participatory methods, and equity, with the ultimate goal of mobilizing academic privilege and collaborative knowledge development towards innovative, community-driven knowledge sharing and advocacy.
Values:
Equity. We will strive to be an equitable and inclusive community. We will work to reduce or mitigate the adverse effects of any barriers to full participation in the activities of the collaborative.
Transparency. We will actively create a culture of openness, honesty, and integrity. We will share real or perceived conflicts of interest. We will keep good records and be transparent about all spending and strategic decisions.
Community-led action that centers the voices of those with lived experience, with particular awareness of the complex influences of colonialism, racism, heteropatriarchy, transphobia, ableism, and other intersecting systems and structures that impact the experiences of peoples disproportionately impacted by the health and criminal legal systems.
Recognition for work. This means fair pay, fair co-authorship, equal opportunity to be engaged in/lead ARC projects.
Valuing the leadership of peers, people with lived experience of the justice system. We aim to amplify the voices of people with lived experience in ways that influence public opinion, public policy, and practice at all levels.
Anti-racism and acknowledgment of white privilege and supremacy.
We fully acknowledge white privilege as the systemic and unfair advantage granted to people because of their whiteness. We understand this privilege as historically contextualized and inextricably tied to historic and ongoing colonialism and the ongoing impacts of slavery and racialized oppression. We acknowledge that white privilege facilitates our group membership and the work that we do. Given this, we pledge to continue to hold each other accountable, confront racism, and reflect on our ongoing complicity within white supremacy and structural racism.