Education

Global Inequality Research Initiative (GIRI) Seminar

Program Description

The Global Inequality Research Initiative (GIRI) seminar is an interdisciplinary, vertically integrated research course that emphasizes a judicious application of mixed methods from the social sciences and humanities, including quantitative, qualitative, and archival research.

GIRI Fall 2024 | Environmental Justice:

Unearthing Disparities, Building Equity

Instructor: Kay Jowers, PhD

Meeting Day, Time, & Location: Tuesdays, 10:20am-12:50pm, Gray 228, West Campus

Description: This course dives into the complex world of environmental justice, tracing its origins from a powerful social movement to a pivotal policy arena. We'll cover its evolution, addressing not just the fundamentals of clean air, water, food, and a healthy environment, but also branching into climate justice and energy justice. We'll examine systemic inequalities that disproportionately burden marginalized communities with environmental hazards while restricting their access to essential resources. These disparities have far-reaching effects on health, finances, education, and well-being, perpetuating a cycle of disadvantage.

Fall GIRI Class text over a faded scale with a leaf on top, text reads "environmental justice: unearthing disparities, building equity"

Moving beyond simply diagnosing issues and identifying challenges, we will dive into the socio-political factors that fuel environmental injustices, alongside the strategies and tactics employed by the environmental justice movement to effect change. We'll closely examine activism and reform efforts from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Our investigation will also cover policy solutions, with a particular focus on the Biden Administration’s Justice40 initiative, as pathways to achieving environmental justice. Furthermore, we will discuss the pivotal roles that universities and researchers occupy in this complex domain, emphasizing the significance of research justice and the value of engaging with communities.

By the course's end, students will have a thorough understanding of environmental justice from theoretical and practical lenses. Drawing from sociology, environmental science, public policy, and law, the course fosters critical thinking, enabling students to analyze issues, navigate policies, and contribute to discussions effectively. This course is further enriched by the opportunity to participate in a vertically aligned research team. Together, students plan, conduct, and (aim to) publish their findings in a peer-reviewed journal, contributing not only to the academic discourse but also developing valuable research, teamwork, and communication skills.

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Program Description

Cross-listed in multiple departments, GIRI facilitates integrated study and research across fields of social, historical, and political inequality. The course, typically offered once each semester, invites students to produce a major paper that will qualify for submission to a refereed journal in the area relevant to the focus of the study. Past GIRI seminar themes have included reparations, genetics and neuroscience, racism in Europe, and social determinants of health.

Program Goals

The goal of the class is to navigate the students through a rigorous process that introduces them to the research process. This includes some exposure to qualitative and quantitative methodology. It introduces students to data gathering, cleaning, analysis, and presentation. When students complete the course, they should have a better understanding of inequalities and its connection to the course’s topic. An advanced undergraduate student or graduate student should gain value from this course.
In all Global Inequality Research Institute courses, the goal is to immerse students in open-ended research, only with the guidelines of exploring a component of the semester’s theme.
Students should not only be able to conduct research, but also share it. GIRI courses always conclude with a capstone conference, where students present their research in a poster or presentation format. The final component of sharing is the goal of having the research paper published in a Social Science journal.

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Past GIRI Seminars & Events

GIRI Spring 2024 banner with outlines of people in the background

Spring 2024: Gender and Development

In Spring 2024, the Global Inequality Research Initiative focused on “Gender and Development”. We examined how gender influences and is influenced by social and economic development processes.

Fall 2023: Digital Bias and Machine Learning

In the Fall 2023 iteration of GIRI, students learned about the role of digital automation in biased social systems and learned practical applications of machine-learning techniques for research.

Front cover of book "You mean it or you don't"

Spring 2023: James Baldwin and Global Inequality

Throughout the spring semester, GIRI students interrogated the life and work of James Baldwin as an entry point into deeper understanding of global inequality.

Front cover of book "the pandemic divide"

Fall 2022: The Pandemic Divide

The Pandemic Divide will explore inequalities through study of the recent Cook Center publication The Pandemic Divide: How COVID Increased Inequality in America.

cartoon black and white image of hands holding a microphone, CD, and paintbrush

Spring 2022: Music, Migration, and Social Revolution

Guest instructor: Quran Karriem is an experimental musician, installation artist and interface designer.

Fall 2021: The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in Global Perspective

This class explored inequalities through study of the history of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

Spring 2021: Athletes and Activism

Athletes and Activism will explore inequalities through study of the history of social protest in athletics and current protest movements in amateur and professional sports around the world.

Fall 2020: “Race and Social Crisis”

Race and Social Crisis explored inequalities in light of contemporary events, including—but not solely—the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing political resistance to anti-Black police violence.

Fall 2019: “Race, Gender, and Entrepreneurship

The goal of the class was to navigate the students through a rigorous process that introduces them to the research process.

ariel view looking down from the Eifel tower

Spring 2019: “Race and Racism in Europe”

The 2019 Spring GIRI seminar explored what humanities scholar David Theo Goldberg refers to as “racial Europeanization,” or how race and racism are framed as a problem everywhere but in Europe.

Fall 2018: “Examining Neuroscience, Genetics, and Inequality”

The 2018 Fall GIRI seminar explored controversial and important issues related to race, genetics and inequality, how they are studied, and whether (and how) such studies should inform medical practice, criminal and other legal actions, personal identity claims, health disparities, and social policy.

Spring 2018: “Reparations”

Racial reparations have been and continue to be one of the most explosive contemporary issues.

Fall 2017: “Examining Neuroscience, Genetics and Inequality

The 2017 Fall Global Inequality Research Institute (GIRI) Seminar Examining Neuroscience, Genetics and Inequality explored controversial and important issues related to race, genetics and inequality.

man smiles and looks into a crib with a pink blanket

Spring 2016: “Social Determinants of Health”

Featured speakers included Chandra Ford, Associate Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

ariel image of men walking with their tall shadows cast beside them

Fall 2015: “Telling Identity Stories: Race, Class, and Psychology”

The capstone conference for the Global Inequality Research Initiative featured a keynote talk by Stephanie Rowley, a professor in the School of Education, the Department of Psychology and the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan