Social Justice Collaborative, Emerson College

The Social Justice Collaborative provides leadership for institutional efforts around equity, access, and social justice (EASJ), cultivating the co-design of strategic and sustainable initiatives to advance social change and fulfill Emerson’s mission to bring innovation, depth, and diversity to communication and the arts.

The SJC works collaboratively with communities across our campuses and in our neighborhoods, locally and transnationally, to cultivate access, healing, and liberatory social justice practices. We lead Emerson College’s deliberate and expansive work to honor the agency, dignity, and brilliance of each member of our community.

Below are a few of the projects and initiatives from the four areas of the Social Justice Collaborative: Elma Lewis Center, Healing & Advocacy Collective, HIVE (Hub for Inclusive Visionary Engagement), and the Office of the Vice President. Please explore our pages to learn more about our work.

Elma Lewis Center

The Elma Lewis Center (ELC) practices community-centered storywork and radical listening. We collaborate with communities and people of all ages who are the most impacted by systems of oppression and yet often have the least access to craft and circulate their stories and self-representation. Our most current projects include FIREWATER Poetics, Youth Programs (ages 3-19), Social Justice Solidarity Circles apprenticeship with Emerson students, and Growing Up Roxbury, a living archive from more than 150 elders' family albums.

Healing & Advocacy Collective

Healing & Advocacy offers confidential trauma-informed support and advocacy-based counseling for people impacted by power-based interpersonal violence. Our offerings include Yoga for Healing, the Healing Workshop Series, and office hours with Truman the Friendly Therapy Beagle. We also facilitate workshops about power and control, trauma-informed approaches, bystander intervention, and transforming culture. We believe in working together to address the larger structural roots of violence, discrimination, and oppression, and are committed to engaging in this work from the lens of radical imagination and community.

HIVE (Hub for Inclusive Visionary Engagement)

HIVE collaborates with students, staff, faculty, and community members to reimagine and shift intercommunity and institutional resources to support material needs, inclusion and belonging, learning opportunities, and creative expression. We offer the free college pathway programs EmersonWRITES and EmersonTHEATRE, host the Dress for Success Career Closet, support Employee Resource Networks, and deepen personal and professional development with Justice at Work. Our programs are rooted in systems navigation, affirming identity, and exploring visionary futures that lead to equity in arts, communication, and higher education.

Office of the Vice President

The Office of the Vice President for Equity & Social Justice leads efforts to actualize equity, access, and social justice principles, practices, and processes across the College. We advance targeted initiatives and culture change through visioning, strategic planning, collaboration, accessible and identity-affirming design, and data-driven analysis in partnership with Emerson community members and neighbors. Our areas of work include the Presidential Advisory Group for Community & Equity, Accessibility Advisory Board, and Emerson360 Community Survey.