Liberatory Possibilities and Praxis

The purpose of this section of RHE is to amplify scholarship that advances liberatory possibilities evidenced by frameworks, methodologies, analytic approaches, and discussions that center epistemic (in)justice within higher education.

Manuscripts in this section offer guidance toward what praxes are needed in higher education and how they can advance epistemic justice as well substantively attend to:

intersecting systems of power (anti-Blackness, misogynoir, white supremacy, coloniality, and settler colonialism) that disproportionally impact scholars from minoritized groups, especially Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in higher education; and
amplification of knowledge, traditions, and/or scholarship born out of communities historically minoritized in higher education.

In addition, RHE LP&P seeks manuscripts that advance epistemic justice and the legitimacy of various forms of knowledge production by articulating what is meaningful and foundational within those approaches. Manuscripts will be evaluated in light of the norms, philosophies, and criteria of the methodological, epistemological, and/or theoretical traditions invoked. Manuscripts we seek include creative works, integrative scholarship, conceptual pieces, and expanded empirical modalities, among other possibilities.

Section Context

It is our hope that this section works toward cultivating an intentional and sustained racial and epistemic reckoning within RHE and the field of higher education. This section developed as RHE grappled with its harm toward Black women scholars. This harm is situated as part of longstanding epistemic injustice occurring against minoritized communities who have and continue to persistently call out harms by ASHE, RHE, and the field of higher education, more broadly. It is our hope that the centering of differential and intersectional oppressions, interrelated struggles, and diverse knowledge within this section can strengthen joint mobilization and praxis. It is our desire that this section does not lose the context in which it was created and lives on to meet the evolving needs of minoritized communities within the field of higher education.

Key Constructs Relevant to this Section

For this section, we have set out to amplify epistemic justice and liberatory praxis understanding that these constructs are permeable containers for what is possible. To guide submissions, we offer the following, while also inviting authors to imagine with us other ways to engage and enact epistemic justice and liberatory praxis. It is important to note that a multigenerational scholarly genealogy informed our thinking of these two constructions including but not limited the work of feminist, critical race, queer, and decolonial thinkers such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Gayartri Chakravorty Spivak, Kristie Dotson, Paulo Freire, Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks, Marcia McKenzie, Leigh Patel, The Combahee River Collective, Sojourner Truth, Eve Tuck, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith. These thinkers frequently underscored how those with multiple and intersectional minoritized identities are also those most likely to experience epistemic injustice and call for liberation in praxis, necessitating the amplification of their knowing and resistance.

Epistemic Justice emphasizes the freedom and capacity of individuals and communities—not only to access or share knowledge—but to define, generate, sustain, and protect their own epistemologies, interpretive frameworks, and systems of meaning. Epistemic justice calls for interrogating the rules, infrastructures, organizational habits, and evaluative and relational norms that perpetuate epistemic inclusion and exclusion.
Liberatory Praxis foregrounds the ongoing process of healing, capacity building, and humanizing that people do to grapple with the institutional and epistemic logics that shape what is knowable and actionable; and what people do to uphold relational responsibility and answerability.

Section Review Rubric

*Note that the Criteria are the same as the main RHE journal criteria but have been further deepened to align more explicitly with LP&P more specifically (deepened components are highlighted).

Section: Liberatory Possibilities and Praxis
Criteria	Description
Quality of Writing	The writing is in active voice (unless for creative reasons), the audience for the work is clear and the manuscript is written for the intended audience, the writing has a consistent style/voice and is coherent and concise. The writing attends to the politics of writing in the naming of people, places, and things in ways that advances epistemic justice.
Organization of Ideas (Including complex ideas)	Organization of complex ideas are accessible to the intended audience. Ideas are organized in alignment with the values and assumptions of the manuscript’s conceptual framing, epistemology, and/or methodology, which may reflect a linear or non-linear approach. Organization of ideas and arguments work in support of advancing liberatory possibilities and praxis for epistemic justice.
Importance of the Problem	The manuscript assumes racism and epistemic injustice as endemic problems and builds from these assumptions. The importance of the problem is framed as more than a scholarly exercise and articulates how it matters materially and epistemologically for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)
Novelty/Originality	The manuscript offers new knowledge, insights, and is creative in its approach, preparation, and process, moving beyond normative topics, writing, or research approaches.
Thoroughness of Literature Reviewed (So that the argument, research design, and conclusions are well grounded in the literature provided. This might not necessarily mean exhaustive.)	The literature meaningfully engages citational practices by grounding their arguments in the work of BIPOC scholars and disrupting intellectual gatekeeping. The manuscript reflects new possibilities for how higher education’s “foundational literature” is defined. Relevant literature may be more broadly defined than research published in scholarly journals or academic books.
Conceptual Grounding	The conceptual grounding is in congruence with liberation, intersectional understanding, and centering of BIPOC. While this may often lend itself to a critical/ transformative epistemological position, this is not required. However, it is clear how the conceptual grounding is in alignment with the section’s overall purpose.
Congruence across Manuscript (e.g., across research questions, use of theory, conceptual frame, and methodology)	Congruence of epistemic justice throughout the manuscript including the questions and epistemologies guiding the work, the conceptual/theoretical groundings, methodology, design, analysis, and writing.
Research Design, Methodology, and/or Method	The design, methodology, method and/or approach advances epistemic justice, and foregrounds being able to address liberatory praxis. It is not expected that manuscripts/pieces for this section be empirical or have a research design.
Quality of Data	Data are comprehensive and intentional for addressing the question and problem and obtained in ways that align with liberatory praxis.
Suitability of Data Analysis	The analysis process must be thoroughly explained to support transparency and to serve as teaching tools for others in the field interested in similar scholarly work. Analytical work is done with attention to intersectional factors at play.
Presentation of Results/Findings or Conceptual Offerings	The findings/results/offerings presented attend clearly to the guiding inquiry and address the problem named from the onset. We seek findings that advance new insights/knowledge and can support the advancement of epistemic justice in higher education.
Thoughtfulness of Discussion, Implications, and Conclusion	For this section, we are seeking discussion and implications that directly and boldly offer a call to action. When it is a research study, the call to action needs to be directly tied to the findings and for the community the study focused on. As a result of this section of the manuscript, the reader should be clear about what praxis is needed and how it advances epistemic justice or in some substantive ways works toward addressing anti-Blackness, coloniality, or other intersecting systems of power that disproportionally impacts BIPOC in higher education.

LP&P Advisory Council

Liberatory Possibilities and Praxis is guided by Senior Associate Editors Chrystal A. George Mwangi (George Mason University) and Milagros Castillo-Montoya (University of Connecticut) in collaboration with the LP&P Advisory Council. Advisory Council members provide support and guidance in continuing to shape the scope, purpose, and process of the section; review for the section and provide feedback on the review process; recommend LP&P ad hoc reviewers; and support early career reviewers in the review process by participating in collaborative reviewing. Advisory Council membership is comprised of seven current Review of Higher Education editorial board members, which allows for continued engagement of the LP&P section with the broader RHE journal leadership and practices. We are thankful for their additional service to the field and RHE.

Advisory Council Members (in alpha order)
- Nolan Cabrera, University of Arizona
- Milagros Castillo-Montoya, University of Connecticut
- Antonio Duran, Arizona State University
- Chrystal A. George Mwangi, George Mason University
- Robert Palmer, Howard University
- Darin M. L. Stewart, University of Denver
- Deryl-Hatch Tocaimaza, University of Nebraska Lincoln
- Annemarie Vaccaro, University of Rhode Island

Rachelle Winkle-Wagner, University of Wisconsin-Madison