#1359: Visualizing Justice: Arts-Based Inquiry in Community-Engaged Climate Education

As a PhD student and "artist-scientist," my work investigates the sociopolitical tensions within climate education. This project utilizes arts-based visual methodologies to analyze a graphic novel authored by two 6th-grade students in a systemically disenfranchised community. When linguistic analysis proved insufficient to capture the "multiplicity of meaning" within our partnership, I turned to visual inquiry to surface subjugated voices and document my own analytic process. The resulting images function as both data analysis and emergent findings. They map the complex interplay of economic disparity, climate violence, and the political threats facing DEI initiatives. By integrating my own positionality, specifically the contradictions between my working-class roots and current position as a middle-class researcher, the artwork makes visible the ethical friction inherent in justice-oriented research. This practice moves beyond simple representation, using art as a moral and political tool to critique power dynamics and resist the reproduction of inequity in collaborative spaces.