Our humanistic research approach to pedagogy foregrounds incarcerated people’s desire for and experiences with collective learning and authorship. LAM Collective scholarship contributes to academic communities grappling with ethical and practical matters of collaborative higher education in prison projects, the values and challenges of implementing justice-oriented pedagogies, and the impact of prison education on teaching and learning. LAM asks how the benefit of higher education in prison can be pushed even further when pedagogy is not merely an approach teachers take to inform instruction, but also situates incarcerated people as creators, practitioners, and authors of pedagogy.
Drs. Morris and Thomas are also conducting research on race relations between people in Ohio's prisons for women. Our research in consultation with LAM foregrounds narratives of intra- and inter-racial relations with keen intersectional attention on how gender, sexuality, and regional meanings shift over time and in tandem with social justice movements in the U.S. since 1950.