Using Dialogue Deliberation and Public Engagement for social justice

As I get closer to defining my dissertation, I am beginning to focus in on how to use dialogic practices to increase social justice in the world. I am currently working on a knowledge area for my doctorate in social change and my recent research has helped me focus on world-systems theory and gender and globalization. These tie closely together. First to explain a knowledge area. Fielding Graduate University is not a bricks and mortar framework where you go and sit in class, listen to a lecture, and test out. We have knowledge areas that we must research and demonstrate in the form of scholarly papers and projects our deep understanding of that knowledge area. There are many required and then others that can be added to inform the thesis. We contract with faculty, we have 40 or so, that specifically have the background to help us with our chosen direction. We chose our topics and focus, it is not dictated to us. We are a multi-disciplinary PhD program and I can draw off of multiple fields of social science to further my practice and studies. A very powerful paradigm.

World-systems theory is interested in economic inequality in the world and gender and globalization is concerned with women and girls and their role in the world. These are very important research topics to me and I am combining them and exploring how dialogue can help create social justice for women and girls in the world. Critical theory and feminist epistemology are also closely related to this work and I will draw heavily off of them.

Keep up the conversations to help heal our world.

John