Research Luncheon Webinar Series
This luncheon series examines epistemic injustice, challenges white supremacy in science, and explores diverse, anti-oppressive research methodologies for human liberation, healing, and thriving.
Strengthening Understanding of Critical Methodology and Methods in Research: Cultivating Epistemic Resistance and Opportunities for Healing
Science has long been shaped by Eurocentric biases, favoring men, whites, and the wealthy, while excluding minoritized groups. Social science research has perpetuated harmful stereotypes, and environmental studies have neglected the impact of pollution and climate change on low-income communities. To address these inequities, researchers are embracing strengths-based perspectives and critical theories that challenge white bias and integrate diverse viewpoints, ensuring science serves all communities equitably.
This luncheon series explores epistemic injustice, racialized organizations, and anti-oppressive methodologies, culminating in an Afro-futuristic workshop to reimagine science as a tool for liberation and healing.
Webinar 1:
Friday, September 13, 2024
12:00 to 1:00pm CST
Is My Work Racist? Critical Thinking and Critical Discourse in Social Work Research
Speaker: Holly Thurston, Senior Research Analyst, OSU College of Social Work
Dr. Thurston worked for 12 years as a QA officer for a county DHHS in a large metropolitan area, conducting investigations of child fatalities with prior government (CPS, Mental Health, and Public Health) involvement. She obtained a PhD in Nursing Science from UC Davis in 2016, and now specializes in spatio-temporal statistical analyses techniques to better understand the role of environment in child welfare and public health issues.
Based on the article Is my work racist? Critical thinking and critical discourse in social work research, this presentation focuses on critical thinking for the social work researcher, specifically, how to critique your past work to ensure that your current and future work aligns your world view and does not inadvertently perpetuate “status quo” ideology. An overview of critical thinking (dual process theory) and Critical Discourse Analysis theories will be covered, followed by an example of self-critique and suggestions for ensuring that your research continues to reflect a social justice framework.
Moderator: Liliane Windsor, PhD, MSW, Professor of Social Work and Associate Dean for Research. School of Social Work, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Webinar 2:
Friday, October 11, 2024
12:00 to 1:00pm CST
What if Epistemic Injustice is the Wrong Question?
Speaker: Karen Staller, Professor of Social Work, University of Michigan, School of Social Work
Karen Staller, PhD, JD, received her educational training at Cornell Law School and Columbia University School of Social Work, where her dissertation on runaway and homeless youth was awarded with distinction. Staller practiced public interest law with low-income senior citizens and at-risk adolescents in New York City. Her scholarship focuses primarily on runaway and homeless youth (and other at-risk adolescents). She is interested in the complicated interplay between social problem construction, social service delivery, and social policy. Her book published by Columbia University Press, Runaways: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped Today’s Practices and Policies, entertains this interplay. Her scholarship starts from a constructionist epistemological perspective and is in the interpretivist tradition. She blends her legal and social work training in her scholarship, research methodology, and her approach to teaching. She teaches in the areas of social welfare policy, child and family policy, and qualitative research methods.
Moderator: Liliane Windsor, PhD, MSW, Professor of Social Work and Associate Dean for Research. School of Social Work, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Webinar 3:
Friday, November 8, 2024
12:00 to 1:00pm CST
1 CE credit available
Bringing Health Equity to Clinical Research: Toward Reparative and Race-Conscious Approaches
Speaker: Bram Wispelwey, Associate Physician in the Division of Global Health Equity, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Bram Wispelwey is co-director of the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights, a joint program between Birzeit University’s Institute of Community and Public Health and the Harvard FXB Center, and he is a co-founder of Health for Palestine, a community organizing initiative in Palestinian refugee camps. Bram is an Associate Physician in the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and an Instructor in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Bram’s research, education, and implementation efforts focus on anti-racist strategies to address hospital inequities, community health worker impact, and the settler colonial determinants of health. Before the start of his medical career, he pursued LGBTQ-rights activism, which informs his health approach at the bedside and in advocacy. Bram is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity and a 2023 awardee of the Brigham and Women’s Nesson Fellowship for Boston-based community health work.
Racial health inequities represent a public health emergency, and many are generated or exacerbated through interactions with health institutions and personnel. This talk outlines a specific case of a hospital-derived inequity that inspired the creation of Healing ARC (acknowledgment, redress, and closure), a repair-based approach to health justice. Healing ARC will be discussed as a potential tool for challenging white supremacy’s hold in our institutions, professions, and practice.
Moderator: Liliane Windsor, PhD, MSW, Professor of Social Work and Associate Dean for Research. School of Social Work, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Webinar 4:
Friday, February 14, 2024
12:00 to 1:00pm CST
Title: TBD
Speakers: Jennifer Mosley & Nicole Marwell, University of Chicago
Moderator: Liliane Windsor, PhD, MSW, Professor of Social Work and Associate Dean for Research. School of Social Work, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Webinar 5:
Friday, March 7, 2024
12:00 to 1:00pm CST
Title: TBD
Speaker: Alexis Jemal, City University of New York
Alexis Jemal, associate professor at Silberman School of Social Work-Hunter College, is a critical-radical social worker and artivist who specializes in racial justice, radical healing, and liberation. Dr. Jemal’s research and scholarship are grounded in her Transformative Potential Framework that guides the development and implementation of holistic, socio-cultural, psychosocial, biobehavioral health interventions. She teaches courses at the Master’s level in clinical practice, critical social work practice, and human behavior, and at the doctoral level in public scholarship.
Webinar 6:
Friday, April 11, 2024 – ON CAMPUS and AVAILABLE FOR CONSULTATIONS
12:00 to 1:00pm CST
Afrofuturism Workshop Radically Reimagining Science
Speaker: Dr. Lonny Brooks, California State University, East Bay
Lonny Avi Brooks is a Professor of Communication and Afrofuturism at Cal State University, East Bay, and co-executive producer of The Afrofuturist Podcast. He co-authored Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness, co-founded the AfroRithm Futures Group, and co-designed the imagination forecasting games Afro-Rithms From The Future and United Queerdom. He is a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation and Visiting Professor at Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute for Design. His work explores Afrofuturism, racial justice, and ancestral intelligence through innovative storytelling and virtual reality projects like the Mothership Series and the Air AfroRithm ship.
Moderator: Liliane Windsor, PhD, MSW, Professor of Social Work and Associate Dean for Research. School of Social Work, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign