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Social Justice in Community: "Environmental Justice in the Rural South" with Danielle Koonce

Co-presented with the Prince George's County Office of Human Rights and the University of Maryland

The Social Justice in Community series brings human rights scholars into conversation about how their work illuminates human rights struggles around us today and what we can do about those struggles.

How does human rights research impact our communities? How does scholarship on human rights violations or issues of social justice have any meaning in our day to day lives? And what is being discussed, studied, and thought about in universities today? Join the Prince George’s County Office of Human Rights, the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System, and the University of Maryland for the new series "Social Justice in Community," as we bring human rights scholars into conversation about how their work illuminates human rights struggles around us today and what we can do about those struggles. Featuring different scholars from the University of Maryland across a variety of disciplines, from African American Studies to Sociology to Criminology and Criminal Justice to Economics to Government and Politics to Anthropology to Hearing and Speech Sciences and more, this series brings exciting new voices to the Prince George’s County community and offers us all fresh ways to engage.

On March 14, 2024, Danielle Koonce is presenting, "Environmental Justice in the Rural South: Research & Community Organizing."

Danielle Koonce is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology. She enjoys thinking about the connections and relationships between race and space, particularly rural spaces and how these relationships contribute foundationally to many broad themes in sociology.  As a social movement scholar, she is also interested in understanding contemporary Black resistance movements, such as the Environmental Justice Movement and Black Lives Matter, specifically as the latter experiences organizational shifts and societal reach. Her dissertation examines the dynamics of power and how these dynamics play out through activists and activism in urban and rural settings.