Our Approach
Our approach to research is rooted in a racial equity framework and informed by intersectionality and transgender health justice. We center the lived experiences and leadership of transgender and gender-diverse people, especially those most impacted by structural racism and marginalization.
The RISE Lab seeks to produce intentional and actionable research that can transform inequities into transgender health justice.
Learn more about the frameworks that guide our research below.
WHO
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Who benefits?
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Who is harmed?
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Who is excluded?
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Who makes decisions?
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Who do systems prioritize?
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Who is made comfortable?
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Who is cited?
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Who is called an expert?
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Who can lead research?
WHAT
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What resources?
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What is the access?
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What values are prioritized?
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What languages are excluded?
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What are the accommodations?
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What variables are used or excluded?
WHEN
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When did it become a priority?
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When do research activities occur?
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When is waiting acceptable, and for whom?
WHERE
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Where does power sit?
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Where do you have to go?
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Where are resources shared?
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Where are findings shared?
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Where is this research going?
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Where does the money go?
WHY
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Why is this project relevant?
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Why use this approach?
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Why should someone want to be involved?
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Why this research topic?
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Why this group of interest?
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Why you?
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Why not you?
NAME INTERSECTING POWER RELATIONS
Questions to Ask
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What are the key intersecting power hierarchies that shape constraints & opportunities for our study participants?
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How do structures of domination, institutional systems, & socio-structural processes produce the inequities under study?
Actions to Take
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Diagram the pathways through each layer of the intersectional causes of health inequities to theorize how inequities are produced.
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Apply a structural analysis to frame the study aims and hypothesis.
DISRUPT THE STATUS QUO
Questions to Ask
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How are my worldview & social positions affecting my research decisions?
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How can the knowledge produced by this research foster collective action for transgender health justice?
Actions to Take
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Practice self-reflexivity about how we as researchers participate in structural production of social/health inequities, including how we are advantaged or penalized by status quo power relations.
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Diagram how research findings can disrupt ongoing socio-structural processes that foster unjust social relations.
CENTER EMBODIED KNOWLEDGE
Questions to Ask
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How can this research center the voices, situated knowledge, & perspectives of the transgender populations of focus?
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How are we being accountable to people who experience & resist multiple intersecting oppressions?
Actions to Take
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Involve transgender community members, activists, & organizations in all stages of research, from formation of study aims through interpretation & dissemination of findings.
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Employ principles & methods from participatory action research traditions.
