Just as we need to engage with critical Black feminist scholarship to approach intersectionality as a key concept for governance, we must also engage critically informed race and gender studies to address ocean equity and justice as researchers and policymakers

It’s essential to reflect on who we are and how our thoughts, frameworks, responsibilities, and practices have been shaped via our social situations—both personally and institutionally—in order to recognize our own positionality. Thus, studying our own lived experiences in relation to social and environmental change and their impacts is a necessary step towards dismantling the systemic forces behind these issues that perpetuate inequity and injustice, while also creating new foundations to support more equitable solutions.

Unfortunately, the concept of “positionality” can be co-opted—used to performatively praise supposedly ‘alternative’ approaches to research, governance, and policy—often in ways that avoid accountability or, worse, in ways that become marketing strategies that lead to appropriation rather than transformation.

In this webinar, we are engaging with Dr. Amelia Moore, who is beginning a new position at Cornell University, where she will collaborate on research related to Environmental Justice in the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment. Dr. Moore and Dr. Yoshi Ota will discuss: What is positionality?

This webinar is brought to you by Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus at the University of Rhode Island.