Our Scholarly Framework

In keeping with the Bowman Center's commitment to social change, we promote and support scholarship that addresses complex social dynamics that shape human experience. Our scholarly framework is inclusive of all disciplines, topics, populations, and methodologies that broadly seek to:

• inform understanding of historical and contemporary issues of social inequality across contexts and life domains (e.g., in education, arts and culture, health and mental health, economic and occupational attainment and mobility, infrastructure and community development)
• illuminate the challenges and opportunities that arise when individuals from different backgrounds and frames of reference come together in significant societal contexts, such as schools and colleges, neighborhoods and communities, work teams in organizations
• inform our understanding of systems of power and privilege and their interactions with groups historically underrepresented and marginalized based on identities including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, social/economic class, culture, sexual identity, ability status, and religion
• highlight the experiences of disenfranchised populations, whose narratives have traditionally been relegated to the outer periphery of intellectual inquiry and academic scholarship, made invisible through epistemologies and research methods that prioritize the perspectives of dominant social groups
• foreground the knowledge systems, assets and resources, and cultural strengths of members of historically marginalized communities in order to promote empowerment.

Our framework reflects an inclusive approach to methodology and discipline, including qualitative and quantitative methods, multi- and inter-disciplinary approaches across social sciences and the arts and humanities, as well as the use of both traditional and non-traditional disciplinary modes of inquiry and methodologies.

Through supporting and operationalizing our framework, we seek to engage and equip members of society with critical ways to think about commonalities and differences that can be applied in a variety of ways to improve daily interpersonal and intergroup interactions, institutional and organizational practices, and policies. From our perspective then, such scholars share a common goal: advancing equity and inclusion throughout our society. We present this framework as an ongoing and fluid perspective. As social and political contexts change, new methodologies are introduced, or different challenges face our communities, this framework may shift.