Abstract:Community-engaged research (CER) for environmental justice (EJ) requires researchers to redefine their traditional roles, which involves unlearning dominant ways of seeing and being as much as learnin...Community-engaged research (CER) for environmental justice (EJ) requires researchers to redefine their traditional roles, which involves unlearning dominant ways of seeing and being as much as learning new knowledge, skills, and dispositions.Knowing oneself in relation to others is a necessary step in coproducing knowledge with communities.Participants need to prepare themselves by examining their own positioning in multiple structures of privilege and oppression.This self-examination is vital for developing the commitment and capacity to redress power imbalances between and among researchers and communities during the research process (Foronda et al. 2016; Tervalon and Murray-Garcia 1998).The goals of this inquiry are to liberate oneself and others from potential abuses of power, but also to move beyond cynicism about the ability of differently situated people to collaborate or paralyzing fear of doing harm, which can prevent researchers from engaging with EJ issues and communities altogether (Lockie 2018).Researchers' examination of themselves in relation to EJ communities is a continuous commitment, not a one-time task, because of the complexity of the work, and ongoing needs to respond to new circumstances and build new relationships.This chapter lays out the groundwork researchers need to do before building a formal relationship with a community partner to engage in the research process.The chapter presents a framework that researchers can use to examine their positioning in multiple structures of power, including researchers' individual characteristics, disciplines, institutional affiliations, and project-related factors.Doing this groundwork is crucial for anticipating potential barriers between researchers and community partners, and preparing to bridge these obstacles to collaboration.Read More