A Place to Rest the Mind: RISER as a Healing-Centered Model for Resilience in Higher Education

The present sociopolitical climate has exacerbated stress and racial trauma for scholars of color across higher education. Amid legislative efforts to dismantle DEI initiatives and increasing hostility toward race-conscious research, scholars who investigate sociocultural equity and race encounter not only academic resistance but also institutional barriers to healing and wellness. These challenges are not abstract; they manifest in physical, emotional, and psychological harm, as William A. Smith (2007) theorizes through the concept of racial battle fatigue.

In this landscape, the Researchers Investigating Sociocultural Equity and Race (RISER) Fellowship, co-founded by Dr. Stephanie Curenton and Dr. Iheoma Iruka offers a culturally relevant, healing-centered intervention. Rooted in Black, Indigenous, and decolonial traditions of care and collectivism, RISER nurtures a restorative academic ecology for scholars whose research and identities are often rendered hyper-visible yet systemically unsupported.

Flowchart titled Researchers Investigating Sociocultural Equity and Race Network, featuring cycles of support, research, feedback, and ideas.

The Trauma of Being and Researching While Black (and Brown)

As Smith and colleagues argue, racial microaggressions—mundane, chronic, and cumulative—erode the health and stamina of Black and Brown scholars, who often find themselves under surveillance, isolated in their departments, and dismissed as too political or lacking objectivity. These everyday indignities result in somatic responses, including fatigue, anxiety, headaches, and elevated blood pressure. Ramirez (2024) expands this conversation by describing how doctoral students of color are forced to navigate predominantly white institutions (PWIs) while simultaneously managing racial stressors in society at large, especially amid the compounded trauma of events like COVID-19 and state-sanctioned violence.

In such environments, there is often little space for rest, let alone for healing.

The RISER Fellowship: A Culturally Grounded Response

RISER was designed as a multigenerational collaborative space for senior, mid-level, junior, and emerging scholars to conduct asset-based research focused on the positive development of Black children, to disseminate research to policymakers and practitioners to dismantle education and health disparities, and promote the thriving and academic success of children. RISER also serves as a space for those scholars to rest and recover; a space where scholars are not merely surviving but supported in thriving. Through its culturally nurturing model, RISER engages African ways of being (Ani, 1994) and healing-centered engagement (Ginwright, 2018) as guiding lights. Rather than viewing trauma through a clinical lens alone, RISER situates healing within an intergenerational community and asset-based research.

RISER’s practices include:

Intergenerational Mentorship: Scholars are mentored by seasoned researchers of color who understand the burdens and possibilities of working in equity-focused fields. These relationships are reciprocal and rooted in shared cultural values and lived experiences.
Tea Times and Village Gatherings: Regular community convenings serve as ritualized moments of collective care. These gatherings function like the pláticas described by Ramirez—grounded, relational spaces where storytelling, laughter, vulnerability, and healing take place.
Wellness Integration: RISER integrates trauma-informed, culturally affirming approaches such as sharing and reflection, somatic practices, and communal professional development. These strategies directly respond to the hyper-productivity culture of academia that leaves no room for emotional processing or communal grounding.

Challenging Institutional Barriers to Wellness

Despite increased institutional discourse on anti-racism and diversity, most universities continue to lack structural support for scholars of color—particularly those doing work that centers race and justice. As Ramirez notes, healing is often the missing element in academic equity efforts. Institutional cultures that emphasize resilience without acknowledging or repairing harm reproduce the very oppression they claim to address.

RISER addresses this disconnect by cultivating a counterspace where similarly situated, underrepresented scholars convene in a culturally affirming environment where their embodied knowledge, ancestral wisdom, and political clarity are not just accepted but prioritized (West, 2019). As a result, RISER Fellows are better equipped to resist disidentification, combat burnout, and continue their research with emancipatory aims.

Circular diagram titled "Research," showing a "Strengths-Based Lens" with sections: Resilience, Cultural Wealth, and Social Capital.

Conclusion: Research as a Site of Liberation and Healing

Healing is not separate from research—it is essential to it. For scholars investigating sociocultural equity and race, healing-centered spaces like RISER are not simply supportive; they are transformative. They reorient research away from extraction and toward restoration. They recognize that wellness is not a luxury but a condition of possibility for critical inquiry.

In an era where equity work is under attack, RISER offers a model for cultivating resilient, rooted scholars who are advancing not only knowledge but justice.

To learn more about the RISER Fellowship or to join the network, visit https://www.bu-ceed.org/riser-network or contact Dr. Melisssa Speight Vaughn, RISER Network Director, mspeight@bu.edu

References

Ani, M. (1994). Let the circle be unbroken: The implications of African spirituality in the Diaspora. Red Sea Press.

Ginwright, S. (2018). The future of healing: Shifting from trauma informed care to healing centered engagement. Medium. https://ginwright.medium.com

Ramirez, J. I. (2024). A place to rest my soul: How a doctoral student of color group utilized a healing-centered space to navigate higher education. Genealogy, 8(3), 97. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8030097

Smith, W. A., Allen, W. R., & Danley, L. L. (2007). “Assume the position . . . you fit the description”: Psychosocial experiences and racial battle fatigue among African American male college students. American Behavioral Scientist, 51(4), 551–578. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764207307742

West, N. (2019). By us, for us: The impact of a professional counterspace on African American Women in student affairs. The Journal of Negro Education, 88(2), 159 – 180.