Institute for Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
What We Do
The Institute for Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) at St. John’s University is a research institute whose principal method of operation is the innovative interweaving of theory and action for the development and engagement of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to addressing the problems caused by systemic racism and the intersecting forms of oppression that accompany it locally, regionally, nationally, and globally.
About the Institute for Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
The Institute for Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) at St. John’s University is a research institute whose principal method of operation is the innovative interweaving of theory and action for thedevelopment and engagement of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to addressing the problems caused by systemic racism and the intersecting forms of oppression that accompany it locally, regionally, nationally, and globally.
Its structure and ethos are shaped by an awareness of the importance of the cross-pollination of ideas and evidence from researchers, policymakers, legislators, industry leaders, community organizers, artists, and grassroots activists who seek to develop solutions for the problems of institutionalized racial injustice and its role in shaping other forms of inequities.
The work of the institute takes place in a number of distinct and interconnected collaborative spaces:
- Ethics in Practice
- Community Research Partnerships
- Incubators
- Education
- Fellowships and Internships
- Visiting Scholars & Speakers
- Journal of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (JCRES)
These spaces are linked by the CRES Institute’s overall approach of interweaving theory and action to develop new knowledges, practices, and pedagogies that address the problems created by systemic racism and the causes and outcomes of the racialization and ethnicization of Latin American, African, Asian, Oceanic, and Indigenous people and their diasporas.
Each of these collaborative spaces brings together opportunities for internal and external group projects that serve the specific focus of that collaborative space. The aim of each of these collaborative spaces is to break down the walls that inhibit work across all boundaries.
Location & Contact Information
Newman Hall, Room 129
718-990-3150
Land & Labor Acknowledgement
We acknowledge the land on which our campus is located as the ancestral homelands of the Lenape (Lenapehoking) people. We honor the Lenape and the diverse indigenous peoples still connected to this land.[1] We also acknowledge all immigrant and indigenous labor, voluntary and involuntary, and honor their struggle by committing to the advancement of the Mission and Values of St. John’s University, which embraces the Judeo-Christan ideals of respect for the rights and dignity of every person, and each individual’s responsibility for the world in which we live.
Institute Leadership
Dr. Natalie Byfield, Founding Director
Dr. Natalie P. Byfield is a Professor in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology. Her research is interdisciplinary; it is broadly concerned with hegemony, specifically the relationship between knowledge and power in the construction and reproduction of racial inequalities in the modern western world and the social justice response to them. She writes about the construction of knowledge and power relationships in the language, media systems, technologies, and research methodologies that occur in the institutions of policing, journalism, the social sciences, and higher education. Dr. Byfield is currently a Senior Research Fellow of the university’s Vincentian Center for Church and Society. Her past fellowships include a Samuels Center Fellowship from the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College of the City University of New York, a Revson Fellowship at Columbia University, and a National Science Foundation Fellowship. She is the author of the monograph Savage Portrayals: Race, Media, and the Central Park Jogger Story. Dr. Byfield has been a consultant on major documentaries about the Central Park Jogger case including “The Central Park Five,” a documentary by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon and the ABC 20/20 Documentary, “One Night in Central Park.” She has worked as a journalist for the New York Daily News. Her work in journalism has also been published in The New York Times, HuffPost, Time: The Weekly Newsmagazine, New York Law Journal, and New York Woman Magazine. Her current book project is titled Minority Report: Place, Race, and State Surveillance in New York City.
Contact Information: 718-990-3151
Karin Torres, Assistant Director
Ms. Torres leverages over fifteen years of experience in program development, resource mobilization, and strategic management in higher education, nonprofit community services and immigration. Throughout her career, Ms. Torres has worked with communities affected by systemic racism and the intersecting forms of oppression that accompany it. She defines her commitment to social justice as the work that God has called her to.
Through her work, Ms. Torres applies the lens of race, ethnicity, and indigeneity as part of her ideological framework to disrupt systems of power and highlight struggles for liberation and self-determination. She is passionate about nurturing healthy ecosystems that connect marginalized communities across social boundaries and creating opportunities to gather, learn each other’s stories, and work together for social justice and sustainability. Ms. Torres has managed several large-scale events, including academic conferences, workshops, study-abroad, and international mission trips.
Ms. Torres’ research centers on the intersections of race, religion, and gender in Latin America and the Caribbean. Her past fellowships include the State University of New York Graduate Diversity Fellowship and Outstanding Graduate award from the School of the Arts and Sciences at SUNY Brockport. Ms. Torres earned a Bachelor of Arts in History and a Master of Arts in History from the State University of New York at Brockport.
Contact Information: 718-990-3155
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
The CRES Institute is currently accepting proposals for the 2025–26 Community Research Partnership Award.
Mission & Vision
The Institute aims to imagine, create, sustain and promote practices of human flourishing. In keeping with the university’s mission to “respect the rights and dignity of every person,” the Institute for Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at St. John’s University honors the knowledges and practices that have long existed outside the formal university structures and settings.
The Institute for Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at St. John’s University operates with an outward facing model of interaction where practical research outcomes can be shared with partner communities and organizations within and outside of the university. It emphasizes an integrated relationship between theory and action. The institute will use critical race and ethnic studies approaches to address systemic racism and other forms of oppression.
Collaborative Spaces
This program fosters collaboration among St. John's faculty, administrators, and staff with corporate, nonprofit, and other community partners to think about our ethical responsibilities individually, collectively, and institutionally for developing solutions to systemic racism and the intersecting forms of oppression that accompany it.
Collaborations within this program encourage the development of applied and professional ethics based on racially literate, inclusive ways of administering leadership and service.
The overall goal of those working in this space is to use research, teaching, and community engagement to develop multi-disciplinary educational programs that teach people how to design and implement ethical practices and policies that redress systemic racism and marginalization or exclusionary practices.
Our aim is to democratize knowledge through opportunities that ensure learning can be transferred to our internal and external communities.
This space nurtures collaboration between SJU faculty, administrators, or students and community-based advocates to use participatory action research, activist research, or other CRES-type methodology models to address systemic racism and the intersecting forms of oppression that accompany it.
The overall goal of those working in this space is to foster equal research partnerships between the St, John’s and the community-based research partners that generate and amplify new knowledges about the intractable nature of systemic racism, develop equitable and inclusive frameworks, and community-based approaches for social change.
This work with local, national, and international communities also centers the life experiences of people from Latin America, Africa, Indigenous lands, Asia, and Oceania to re-distribute power in the knowledge production process.
2024 – 25 CRES SANSONE FELLOWS
The Institute for Critical Race and Ethnic Studies is honored to announce the selection of the 2024–25 CRES Community Research Partnership Fellows. With excitement we share our congratulations to Marina Sorochinski, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Criminal Justice and Homeland Security, in The Lesley H. and William L. Collins College of Professional Studies, and Robert Fanuzzi, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of English, in St. John's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, who have received this unique funding opportunity for their collaborative research with community organizations outside the University.
The institute’s Sansone Funding Programs recently created by the Mary C. Sansone Fellowship Endowment Fund and the Zachary Sansone Fellowship Endowment Fund support CRES fellows in conducting research that best articulates solutions to problems created by systemic racism. These two fellowships are named in memory of Mary C. Sansone and her husband Zachary, whose shared passion for righting wrongs led the Sansone Foundation to support this social justice-related research and programming in the CRES Institute.
2025 – 26 CALL FOR PROPOSALS
The CRES Institute is currently accepting proposals for the 2025–26 Community Research Partnership Award. The CRES Community Research Partnership is open to St. John’s graduate students, faculty, administrators, and staff interested in conducting participatory action research, activist research, or other CRES-type methodology models to address systemic racism and the intersecting forms of oppression that accompany it.
A Q&A webinar will be held for faculty, administrators, and staff on Thursday, March 27, and for graduate students on Monday, March 31.
This is a collaborative space that incubates a start-up research project through four stages over three years. During this period, they receive financial and administrative support. Projects launch to become ongoing satellite programs that address problems caused by systemic racism and the intersecting forms of oppression that accompany it.
This space is open to SJU faculty and administrators for the development of projects that create CRES satellite collaborations across the university. Projects can include community-based collaborators. The work performed in this space is expected to advance research techniques such as counterstory, autoethnography, critical archival research, and critical fabulation, that elevate the voices of those traditionally marginalized due to systemic racism and associated forms of oppression.
This space aims to support projects using critical race and ethnic studies research methodology as a foundation for developing structural solutions that foster transformative environments where new knowledges incorporating racially and ethnically inclusive perspectives can be interpreted, shared, and applied.
This space serves as an area for the development of curricular and co-curricular programs, activities, and resources that support the instructional work of the CRES undergraduate major and minor, which brings multi-disciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to examinations of systemic racism and the intersecting forms of oppression that accompany it globally, nationally, regionally and here at St. John’s University.
This space provides educational support through K-12 forums that offer CTLE Credits, undergraduate programs, community engagement, and strategic global partnerships.
Programs within this space also operate to support the collaborations among CRES faculty, CRES Institute administrators and staff, and CRES Institute-associated community leaders. This collaboration allows for the amplification of the pedagogical techniques that are most effective in CRES work.
Because many people who are interested in and/or teaching in CRES are from underrepresented groups, the education space in the CRES Institute creates a supportive group of people from underrepresented communities as they establish themselves within academic institutions or outside of academic communities where they do CRES-related work. As such, this space also serves as a site for civic education and engagement around the issue of racial justice.
This is a space for CRES Institute fellows and interns to meet for formal and informal presentations of work they are performing on CRES institute projects that examine the problems caused by systemic racism and the intersecting forms of oppression that accompany it globally, nationally, regionally and here at St. John’s University.
The overall goal of CRES fellowships and internships is to support the development of SJU community participation in the expansion of scholarship and community work around Critical Race & Ethnic Studies at local, national, and international levels.
CRES Internships provide opportunities for students to work closely with SJU faculty or administration on projects that generate and amplify new knowledges about the intractable nature of systemic racism, develop equitable and inclusive frameworks, and implement community-based approaches for social change.
CRES Fellowships also allow for the development of publications in the form of white papers that address policies, practices, and other solutions to the problems created by systemic racism.
This program facilitates collaboration with SJU departments and units, e.g., Office of Global Studies and ACEI, to support the university becoming a site for the recruitment of visiting local, regional, national, and international scholars and speakers whose work examines systemic racism and the intersecting forms of oppression that accompany it globally, nationally, regionally and here at St. John’s University.
The CRES Institute announces two calls per academic year to support one visiting scholar each semester. The program offers opportunities to advance scholarship, present research, and collaborate on current CRES program initiatives.
The Journal of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (JCRES) is a multidisciplinary, scientific, peer reviewed and open-access journal that publishes empirical research, critical reviews, theoretical articles, interviews, and invited book reviews that focus on and advance knowledge of critical race and ethnic studies nationally and internationally. Areas covered also include intersections between race, gender, sexual orientation, social class, ability status, physical and mental well-being, individual therapeutic, educational, pedagogical, social justice and activism, work/employment, social public policy interventions, family across the lifespan, and the arts.
CALL FOR PAPERS JCRES is currently accepting submissions for an upcoming volume.
The Journal of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (JCRES) is currently accepting submissions for an upcoming volume with the following call for papers:
Volume 3:
"Enduring" Indigenous Voices and Perspectives Amidst the Ongoing Structures of Colonialism
The Journal of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (JCRES) invites submissions for an upcoming volume dedicated to amplifying indigenous voices and perspectives around the world. We borrow the term "enduring indigeneity" from J. Kehaulani Kauanui (2016) who explains that indigeneity not only endures the "operating logic of colonialism," but also "holds out against it." We encourage scholars, community members, allies, and activists to contribute original research articles, reviews of works (films, books, music, art exhibits), creative pieces (stories, poems) that explore the struggles for justice expressed in the lived experiences, knowledge systems, and cultural practices of indigenous communities across the globe.
Submission Guidelines: Please email an abstract of 300 words to cresjournal@stjohns.edu by November 30, 2024. The abstract should include a title, keywords, and contact information.
Important Dates
- Abstract Due: November 30, 2024
- Notification of Abstract Acceptance: Dec 1, 2024
- Manuscript Due: March 1, 2025
- Final Manuscript Due: November 15, 2025
- Publication Date: December 15, 2025
See the Aims and Scope for more information about JCRES.
Donor Support
Gifts to The Institute for Critical Race and Ethnic Studies will support conferences, collaborative spaces, research fellowships, post-doctorate positions, speaker series, and other naming opportunities.
If you would like to support The Institute for Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at St. John’s University, please contact Dr. Natalie Byfield to begin a discussion.