Dr. Marcos Luna Delivers Keynote Address at Harvard Conference on Civically Engaged Scholarship

Professor Marcos Luna (geography and sustainability) gave the keynote address at Harvard’s Ninth Annual Scholarship and Social Justice Conference. Professor Luna shared his journey, and lessons learned, in becoming a scholar and advocate for environmental justice.

In addition to teaching and published research on environmental justice, Luna is a governor-appointed member of the Massachusetts Environmental Justice Council, an appointed member of a committee for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to provide recommendations on mapping disadvantaged communities, and he serves as an elected officer of the board of directors for GreenRoots, an environmental justice community organization serving Chelsea and East Boston. He spoke to undergraduate researchers from more than 20 colleges and universities from across the country who are seeking to find their own paths on balancing scholarship, civic engagement, and social justice.

Harvard’s Annual Scholarship and Social Justice Conference brings staff, faculty, and undergraduates together to celebrate social justice-focused scholarship and reflective learning. The purpose of this conference is:

• to honor scholarship that focuses on challenges facing society concerning equity and inclusion and historically marginalized and under-represented communities;
• to illuminate community-engaged research which reflects qualities of reciprocity and mutuality in the co-creation of scholarship, in addition to being transdisciplinary and inclusive of knowledge from outside the academy.
• to provide undergraduate researchers an opportunity to engage in academic discourse and research dissemination

Read the story in the Harvard Gazette