Take a deep breath in. Go ahead. Now let it out… In that breath is 4 billion years of Earth's history. This was the beginning of Dr. Dawn Sumner's talk at the UCD Feminist Research Institute. Dr. Sumner is the FRI director and a geobiologist who currently conducts research about oxygen levels, cyanobacteria, and microbial mats in Antarctica. Her opening invited the audience to reflect on our interconnected relationship with geological time, one of the themes of the talk.

In this course, we will read Weathering by Arline T. Geronimus, the UC Davis Campus Community Book Project for 2024-25. Students will read the text with a feminist lens, with supplemental materials introducing perspectives from Black feminists. Goals for the class will be to frameworks, practices, and concrete actions students can take to counter injustice. We will also explore the relationship between intersectionality and justice, with attention to race, gender, disability, queerness, and nationality.

This course investigates how ecofeminism and queer theory—often inspired by indigenous and decolonial perspectives—disrupt traditional narratives surrounding nature, culture, and power. We will unsettle boundaries between dichotomies such as nature/culture, life/death, mind/body, human/non-human, matter/spirit, and within various social constructs such as race and gender. We will trace the violent effects of patriarchy, human-exceptionalism, white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, and modern science.

Asking Different Questions in Climate Science is a seminar for climate scientists and researchers more broadly who seek to integrate equity more deeply into their research. Participants will learn how to more deeply integrate socio-cultural factors into their work. Topics covered include how historic bias still influences current scientific practices and how to address this, conducting meaningful community-engaged research, working with tribal nations, improving modeling through deeper incorporation of equity, and other relevant areas.

The founders of the Feminist Research Institute created a brilliant vision with immense possibility. We are making good on their vision. We have something solid we can stand on that shows people what we are about. 

I was lucky that when I woke up on November 6, I caught a live stream by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. I recommend watching the entire stream. Gumbs reflected on how during the first 100 days in office, a new president often engages in a display of power by pardoning people, passing laws, implementing new practices, and selecting appointees.. We can do our own version of this too.

A Student Assistant IV is sought to work for the Feminist Research Institute. The Feminist Research Institute is dedicated to changing research culture towards justice and liberation. Scientific practices remain infused with the legacies of white supremacy, colonialism, and patriarchy. And we seek to change this. If this mission resonates with you, please read on!

In January of 2023, I joined the Feminist Research Institute (FRI) as a research assistant and worked on a project exploring the mobility justice movement. As an undergraduate student new to research, I was expecting to mostly observe the graduate students and FRI’s Director, Sarah McCullough, as they championed the project. In most research settings, undergraduate students play minor roles and mostly observe. Instead, I became a fully integrated member of the research team, an experience that has profoundly shaped my understanding of equity, mentorship, and learning.

Is it possible to intervene in the racist zoning practices that are fueling displacement in cities across the United States? FRI Postdoctoral Fellow Kai Wen Yang’s new article in Urban Geography, Zoning initiatives, divide or unite?

FRI Summer Reading Club: Black Feminists Dream

Tuesday, July 5:30 pm

at Feminist Research Institute and online

We are thrilled to introduce the third cohort of the Environmental Justice Leaders Program! For the 2024 cohort, six leaders across California were selected to participate in a knowledge exchange with UC Davis researchers. The Leaders are very committed and passionate about creating change in their communities and come with many years of doing the work on the ground! This year’s theme is mobility justice, focusing on matters of emerging transportation and energy and their intersection with racial equity. 

Our fifth annual 2024 FRI Transformative Research Symposium on May 10, 2024 was a success! Thank you to all of our presenters, FRI staff, and attendees. 

“Biking is a political issue. It’s a just issue”––Yolanda Davis-Overstreet

The concept of health brings up images of doctor visits at a clinic, eating balanced meals, or exercising at the gym. Feminism is not just theory, but practice, that centers on care and well-being of everyone, including health. The Feminist Health Justice Collective wanted to expand the idea of health, focusing on open education as empowerment for anyone to access. The team, consisting of faculty and students, built an online database from scratch. 

We are excited to continue the Earthly Feminisms Slow Reading group. Last winter, we engaged in questions of unsettling Western narratives of conquest, heroism and human exceptionalism; discussing the meanings and politics of what constitutes life; and lessons from other earthly species like mushrooms. This Spring we started off by reading on Black Ecologies to think about how ecologies too become racialized.