Concept

We wish to lead our department and help lead UCSB in researching “Research + Activism.” This title refers to evolving paradigms of hybrid scholarship and activist, advocacy, or other public work, including in the wake of recent “social justice” movements. What are the traditions, innovations, and problems of mixed scholarly and social research “impact”? How do different disciplines theorize and practice such work? How do research universities and research funding systems accommodate activist research in their policies and processes? And how does the U.S. compare to other national or regional research frameworks in this regard? Most immediately, how can or should “research + activism” make a difference in post-2020 anti-racism initiatives, research strategies, curriculum planning, and hiring and promotion policies at UCSB and similar R1 public universities?

The specific research instrument … we will create to study “research + activism” is one we have had success with while launching other research ventures…. The instrument is an online, public bibliography…. Making a bibliography for a new area of study is a formative intellectual experience because it requires both basic research (in this case, about practices, theories, and policies of “research + activism”) and high-level, synthetic thought (in this case, to develop a taxonomic ontology of “research + activism”). The conceptual map of a field represented by a well-done, public bibliography—especially when accompanied by a statement of taxonomical structure and scope—can be highly influential….