Brock is recognized nationally and internationally for our social justice research.
Brock University’s Social Justice Research Institute (SJRI) is a vibrant collective of 60+ faculty from a wide variety of disciplines. These faculty members work together, with students, and/or with community leaders to create meaningful, research-based relationships and to produce socially relevant, transdisciplinary scholarship.
One example of a recently completed community partnership is this report in collaboration with United Way, which explores the impacts of precarious employment in Niagara. Another example is this report by a team of Brock University researchers, in collaboration with peers researchers from the Fort Erie Native Friendship Centre, which explores barriers to employment engagement for Indigenous residents of Fort Erie. Other current community partnership projects tackle social problems such as barriers to services to address gendered violence, poverty and prosperity, and housing in Niagara.
Additionally, the SJRI has supported many other initiatives through small grants, including projects led by affiliates that address food production, sexuality and consent education, indigenous education, unionization, mental health, and arts-based approaches to literacy. Brock faculty members who are part of the Animals and Justice Research Group specifically study moral issues tied to the use of animals in the tourism industry and ancient and contemporary texts that challenge the preeminence of human beings. SJRI affiliates draw on their varied areas of expertise when developing and supporting social justice-oriented projects such as these.
Brock also is home to Studies in Social Justice, which publishes articles, dispatches and creative works relating to the social, cultural, economic, environmental, political, and philosophical problems associated with struggles for social justice.
Brock News stories
March 30, 2023
Collective action among Indigenous peoples in Latin America the focus of new book
March 16, 2023
Researchers working with Indigenous communities to better deliver heart-health information
March 7, 2023
February 17, 2023
Brock’s first EDI advisor guides research policies, practices