Our Programs
We bring together researchers, organizations, and communities to co-develop knowledge that equips ordinary people to forge paths toward a more just world.
The Center for Racial Justice and Equitable Futures bridges research and action to advance positive change.
Our position within a research university allows us to thoughtfully cultivate communities of learning to spearhead and conduct innovative research that expands understanding of race, racism, and related inequalities.
Racial Justice Fellows Program
The Racial Justice Fellows Program creates a pathway for Cornell students to be directly involved in work that enriches the campus community and beyond, with the aim of advancing systemic change. The program cultivates a generation of leaders who can help build a more just society. A new cohort of fellows will be selected each fall.
The 2025–2026 cohort of Racial Justice Student Fellows is a group of nine graduate students and three undergraduate students whose work reflects a deep commitment to advancing racial equity and social transformation through research, creativity, and community engagement.
Thriving Futures Ambassador Program
Racial Justice Impact Grants
Racial Justice Impact Grants support transformative research and action by facilitating bold collaboration between researchers and community partners. Faculty from all disciplines and fields are invited to propose and develop high-impact collaborations that build knowledge and catalyze action to advance racial justice. For more details, contact equitable.futures@cornell.edu.
Spring 2025 Impact Grant Awardees
Lead Researcher: Angela Odoms-Young, Nancy Schlegel Meinig Professor of Maternal and Child Nutrition
Improving Dietary Behaviors and Addressing Food Insecurity in Youth and Young Adults (16–21) Living with Sickle Cell (SDC)
Lead Researcher: Monica Cornejo, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication
A Longitudinal Survey Exploring Formerly Detained Migrants’ Stressors, Risk, & Resilience
Postdoctoral Fellows Program
The Racial Justice Postdoctoral Fellowship Program will deepen communities of learning at Cornell and enrich the network of scholars doing research and taking action to create more just and equitable futures.
Faculty Fellows Program
Faculty fellows at the Center for Racial Justice and Equitable Futures will develop and lead a project connected to their own research, teaching, and/or engagement during their 10-month fellowship term.
Faculty applicants are encouraged to think creatively and broadly about the projects they develop for their fellowship. Faculty can use this as an opportunity to pursue research that they otherwise might be unable to take on, design community engagement initiatives, organize seminars or conferences, facilitate writing groups, create student learning opportunities, and more.
Rooted in Justice Program
The Rooted in Justice program is a core initiative of the Center for Racial Justice that supports community-driven efforts to challenge systemic racism and advance equity across local upstate New York institutions. The program advances Cornell’s land-grant mission by investing in grassroots leadership, fostering cross-sector collaboration, and amplifying the voices of those most impacted by racial injustice. Guided by the Community Advisory Board, this program is rooted in accountability, transparency, and deep community partnership. Together, we build the conditions for long-term, transformative change.
Graduate Student Research Grants
Graduate Student Research Grants support transformative research by equipping students to pursue bold, justice-oriented scholarship that advances racial equity and social change. We invite graduate students from all disciplines and fields to apply. The Center for Racial Justice and Equitable Futures will provide resources to support innovative, creative, and compelling projects with the potential to build knowledge useful for advancing racial justice.
This year’s awardees represent a wide range of fields—from political theory and public health to digital technologies and historical inquiry—each contributing vital insight into structures of power, identity, and belonging.
2025–2026 Awarded Research Initiatives
- The State and Social Transformation in Indian Political Thought
- East African Asians and the Bungalow: Plantation Economies and Housing in the Late Colonial Period
- Affirmative Action and Career Consequences: Evidence from Brazil
- The Political Consequences of Prison Privatization
- The Unequal Consequences of Fertility Stalls
- Auditing ASR Bias in Parole Hearing Transcription Systems
- Black Power and the Coordinates of Political Desire in Trinidad and Tobago, 1955–1975
- Defining the American West: Black Women of the Western United States, 1850–1920
- Digital Care as Resistance: Creating Sociotechnical Networks to Resist Extractive Futures
- Housing and the Hidden Geography of Segregation: Uncovering Micro-Spatial Mechanisms of Ethnic Residential Sorting
- Sharing Stories in the Margins: Envisioning Justice and Health Equity Through Somali Canadian Community Salons
- Assailing Asylum: The Political Manufacturing of an Asylum Crisis in the United States
- Tracing Collection Histories in the Pineapple Family: From Herbaria to Genomes
- Speculation and the Social Life of Vacancy in Seattle’s Third Places
- The Politics of Feeling Unsafe: How Emotions Sustain Punitive Law Enforcement
- Fostering Health Equity: Enhancing Patient-Centered Shared Decision-Making with AI Systems for Older Men with Early-Stage Prostate Cancer