A new cohort of faculty fellows at Georgetown University’s Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching and Service (CSJ), a base for social justice activism at the university, will conduct social justice research in their respective fields, the CSJ announced Jan. 27.
The annual CSJ Faculty Fellows Program provides a group of Georgetown faculty members with an 18-month opportunity to advance social justice and community-oriented scholarship. The fellows come from across the Georgetown community — including fields such as global health, environmental conservation and juvenile justice — and will collaborate through regular discussion to increase their understanding of social issues while working on individual research projects.
Diana Rayes, a fellow who researches refugee and migrant mental health in the university’s Global Health Institute, said she applied to the faculty fellows program to engage with others in the Georgetown community who are interested in social justice.
“I was looking for an opportunity to be connected to faculty across the campus, especially from where I sit in the Global Health Institute,” Rayes told The Hoya. “It’s sort of an interdepartmental institute hoping to bring together faculty working on global health. I thought it would be a good way to meet others who were social justice oriented and working on projects that were for the greater good.”
The fellows, through group meetings and personal projects, will work to understand each other’s fields of study, integrate social justice within their work and immerse themselves in the CSJ’s mission to serve the Washington, D.C. community.
Shikha Chandarana, a CSJ fellow who serves as a postdoctoral fellow at the Georgetown University Medical Center researching domestic violence, said her work is already tied to social justice.
“I think violence is fundamentally a conversation on justice, whether it is violence happening within our public sphere or violence happening within the private sphere,” Chandarana told The Hoya. “So my work, since it is very much related to an empowerment framework, relates to justice in the most direct way.”
Lauren Arrington, a fellow and Berkley School of Nursing professor, said she joined the faculty fellows program to reconnect with her academic roots and increase her engagement with the humanities.
“I applied to be a Center for Social Justice Faculty Fellow because the Center’s commitment to advancing justice and the common good aligns with my professional values,” Arrington wrote to The Hoya. “While I currently teach nursing and practice as a nurse-midwife, my first degree is in History and Africana Studies. Joining the CSJ Faculty Fellows is an opportunity to collaborate with faculty and students across disciplines and reconnect with the humanities to enhance my work and the communities I serve.”
Arrington said she is launching a program within the university’s Doctor of Nursing Practice that coincides with her involvement with the CSJ.
“This year, I am launching the Equity & Engagement Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Scholars Program, an innovative pathway that prepares DNP students to design and implement equity-focused, community-engaged doctoral projects,” Arrington wrote. “This work aligns with the CSJ Faculty Fellows’ aims by cultivating practitioners who partner authentically with communities and generate socially transformative scholarship. Serving as a CSJ Fellow will strengthen the program’s implementation and support the integration of community engagement across the DNP curriculum.”
Rayes said her involvement with the CSJ gives her insight into the mental health services in the Washington, D.C.-Maryland-Virginia (DMV) region.
“Getting to know what the center is doing in the D.C. area was something that really had an impact on me in our last meeting, just hearing what people are doing locally,” Rayes said. “Since I do so much global work, it’s just nice to be able to be grounded in what’s happening in the DMV more broadly in terms of refugee and migrant health services, but beyond that as well, ensuring health access to marginalized or vulnerable populations.”
Chandarana said she plans to use her time as a fellow to enhance her teaching and community involvement.
“I plan to bring in community voices to the classes I teach,” Chandarana said. “I teach a class on identifying domestic violence in clinical settings at the medical school, so I wondered about bringing in community organizations that work with violence victims and survivors to get an understanding of what it is that they need from a medical system to be heard. I plan to use it to both bring in the community, but also go out to the community, through our research.”
