Session One: Migration
Building Infrastructure for Justice-Centered Research: The Design Lab Model in Action
At the Institute for Racial Justice, we build infrastructure that enables justice-centered research to thrive in Chicago. Rather than supporting individual projects in isolation, we design systems that connect faculty, students, community partners, and practitioners, strengthening everyone's capacity to do this work well.
Our Design Lab model is one example of that system in action.
What Makes a Design Lab Different
Design Labs aren't traditional academic presentations. They're structured convenings designed to activate the ecosystem around a research project, bringing together the people, expertise, and relationships that help rigorous, community-rooted research move forward.
Rather than positioning IRJ as the expert, Design Labs create space for shared problem-solving. Faculty bring research questions. Community partners bring frontline insight. Students gain real-world learning. Practitioners offer strategic guidance. Together, they strengthen the work in ways no single person or organization could achieve alone.
The Design Lab model is designed to be repeatable across projects and issue areas, allowing insights and relationships from one convening to strengthen the next. This is infrastructure-building: creating durable systems that produce meaningful outcomes over time.
Advancing Loyola's Mission Through Systems-Building
This approach reflects Loyola University Chicago's commitment to research and community engagement that serves the common good. As a Jesuit, Catholic institution, Loyola's strategic priorities emphasize scholarship that advances justice and partnerships rooted in mutual respect. IRJ operationalizes that mission by building infrastructure that enables faculty and community partners across Chicago to do this work at scale.
By creating repeatable models like the Design Lab, IRJ helps Loyola fulfill its distinctive calling: not simply to produce knowledge, but to ensure that knowledge strengthens communities and contributes to a more just society.
What the Model Makes Possible: Evidence from a Recent Design Lab
When Dr. Michele Kenfack brought her Changing Faces, Safe Places project to IRJ's Design Lab, the model did exactly what it's designed to do. It activated a web of connections that moved the research forward.
Dr. Kenfack's project examines how Chicago communities are experiencing migration and demographic shifts, with the goal of helping residents and city leaders understand these changes through empathy and equity rather than fear and division. The research confronts a particularly urgent challenge: conducting ethical, community-engaged work during a period of heightened uncertainty and fear.
The Design Lab brought together faculty, students, community service providers, and immigration advocates to help advance the project through this complex moment. What emerged wasn't just helpful for Dr. Kenfack's research. It revealed important insights about how community-engaged research can remain responsive without losing integrity.
How the System Activated Progress
In the two months following the Design Lab, Dr. Kenfack reported that the convening created a "web of connections" that has directly enabled next steps. A relationship initiated through one Design Lab participant led to another connection with a community service provider, which led to an interview that's now shaping the research direction. Trusted referrals have opened new outreach pathways. Strategic connections are supporting recruitment for upcoming community roundtables.
This is what well-designed infrastructure does: it creates the conditions for momentum.
The Design Lab also surfaced a critical insight that has redirected the research approach. Initially, Dr. Kenfack focused on interviewing people directly affected by displacement and migration. Design Lab participants expanded that frame by elevating an important truth: service providers are also directly affected, and they hold unique value as research partners.
Service providers have daily contact with immigrant communities, trusted relationships built over time, and frontline insight into how public systems and policies are experienced in real life. In today's climate, where many people are understandably cautious about participating in interviews or public discussions, these embedded relationships matter more than ever. As Dr. Kenfack noted, connections made "through someone they know" help people feel safe, especially when research touches politically charged realities.
This shift didn't come from IRJ telling Dr. Kenfack what to do. It emerged because the model brought the right people into conversation at the right time.
Building Capacity, Not Dependency
One of IRJ's core commitments is "building the bench, not becoming the bench." This means our role is to strengthen the capacity of faculty, students, and community partners to do justice-centered work, not to position ourselves as the sole experts or necessary intermediaries.
The Design Lab model reflects this philosophy. We create the space, facilitate the connections, and help activate expertise that already exists across Chicago. Then we step back and let that ecosystem do what it's designed to do: support rigorous, ethical, community-engaged research that can actually produce change.
Dr. Kenfack's project now moves forward with:
- New relationships that support ethical recruitment and outreach
- Strategic guidance on adapting research methods to shifting community conditions
- Practical pathways for engaging service providers as key partners
- Connections to practitioners who can amplify findings when the time comes
That's capacity-building. That's what sustainable infrastructure looks like.
Why This Model Matters for Chicago
Dr. Kenfack's research has the potential to shift how Chicago residents, city leaders, and policymakers understand migration, community change, and resource distribution. But the impact doesn't stop with one project.
Every Design Lab strengthens the network of people equipped to advance justice-centered research in Chicago. Every convening builds relationships that extend beyond a single project timeline. Every connection creates potential for future collaboration.
This is how systems work: they create value that compounds over time.
Join the Ecosystem We're Building
IRJ welcomes collaborators who want to strengthen the infrastructure for justice-centered research in Chicago, whether you're Loyola faculty developing community-engaged projects, students seeking real-world research experience, practitioners with frontline insight, or community partners looking for authentic research collaboration.
Ways to engage
- Faculty: Bring your research project to a future Design Lab for strategic feedback and connection-building. Sign up to be a presenting partner.
- Students: Participate in Design Labs as research contributors and learn community-engaged methods in practice
- Community partners and practitioners: Join Design Lab convenings to share expertise and help shape research that matters
- Everyone: Share your perspectives and experiences on migration through surveys, contribute stories or reflections to the audio archive, or explore other ways to support ongoing research initiatives. To get involved, email Dr. Kenfack at mkenfack@chiul.org
The Design Lab model is just one example of how IRJ builds infrastructure for justice-centered work in Chicago. If you're interested in learning more about our approach or exploring partnership opportunities, contact us at racialjustice@luc.edu.
Together, we're not just supporting individual projects. We're building the systems that make meaningful research possible.
Building Infrastructure for Justice-Centered Research: The Design Lab Model in Action
At the Institute for Racial Justice, we build infrastructure that enables justice-centered research to thrive in Chicago. Rather than supporting individual projects in isolation, we design systems that connect faculty, students, community partners, and practitioners, strengthening everyone's capacity to do this work well.
Our Design Lab model is one example of that system in action.
What Makes a Design Lab Different
Design Labs aren't traditional academic presentations. They're structured convenings designed to activate the ecosystem around a research project, bringing together the people, expertise, and relationships that help rigorous, community-rooted research move forward.
Rather than positioning IRJ as the expert, Design Labs create space for shared problem-solving. Faculty bring research questions. Community partners bring frontline insight. Students gain real-world learning. Practitioners offer strategic guidance. Together, they strengthen the work in ways no single person or organization could achieve alone.
The Design Lab model is designed to be repeatable across projects and issue areas, allowing insights and relationships from one convening to strengthen the next. This is infrastructure-building: creating durable systems that produce meaningful outcomes over time.
Advancing Loyola's Mission Through Systems-Building
This approach reflects Loyola University Chicago's commitment to research and community engagement that serves the common good. As a Jesuit, Catholic institution, Loyola's strategic priorities emphasize scholarship that advances justice and partnerships rooted in mutual respect. IRJ operationalizes that mission by building infrastructure that enables faculty and community partners across Chicago to do this work at scale.
By creating repeatable models like the Design Lab, IRJ helps Loyola fulfill its distinctive calling: not simply to produce knowledge, but to ensure that knowledge strengthens communities and contributes to a more just society.
What the Model Makes Possible: Evidence from a Recent Design Lab
When Dr. Michele Kenfack brought her Changing Faces, Safe Places project to IRJ's Design Lab, the model did exactly what it's designed to do. It activated a web of connections that moved the research forward.
Dr. Kenfack's project examines how Chicago communities are experiencing migration and demographic shifts, with the goal of helping residents and city leaders understand these changes through empathy and equity rather than fear and division. The research confronts a particularly urgent challenge: conducting ethical, community-engaged work during a period of heightened uncertainty and fear.
The Design Lab brought together faculty, students, community service providers, and immigration advocates to help advance the project through this complex moment. What emerged wasn't just helpful for Dr. Kenfack's research. It revealed important insights about how community-engaged research can remain responsive without losing integrity.
How the System Activated Progress
In the two months following the Design Lab, Dr. Kenfack reported that the convening created a "web of connections" that has directly enabled next steps. A relationship initiated through one Design Lab participant led to another connection with a community service provider, which led to an interview that's now shaping the research direction. Trusted referrals have opened new outreach pathways. Strategic connections are supporting recruitment for upcoming community roundtables.
This is what well-designed infrastructure does: it creates the conditions for momentum.
The Design Lab also surfaced a critical insight that has redirected the research approach. Initially, Dr. Kenfack focused on interviewing people directly affected by displacement and migration. Design Lab participants expanded that frame by elevating an important truth: service providers are also directly affected, and they hold unique value as research partners.
Service providers have daily contact with immigrant communities, trusted relationships built over time, and frontline insight into how public systems and policies are experienced in real life. In today's climate, where many people are understandably cautious about participating in interviews or public discussions, these embedded relationships matter more than ever. As Dr. Kenfack noted, connections made "through someone they know" help people feel safe, especially when research touches politically charged realities.
This shift didn't come from IRJ telling Dr. Kenfack what to do. It emerged because the model brought the right people into conversation at the right time.
Building Capacity, Not Dependency
One of IRJ's core commitments is "building the bench, not becoming the bench." This means our role is to strengthen the capacity of faculty, students, and community partners to do justice-centered work, not to position ourselves as the sole experts or necessary intermediaries.
The Design Lab model reflects this philosophy. We create the space, facilitate the connections, and help activate expertise that already exists across Chicago. Then we step back and let that ecosystem do what it's designed to do: support rigorous, ethical, community-engaged research that can actually produce change.
Dr. Kenfack's project now moves forward with:
- New relationships that support ethical recruitment and outreach
- Strategic guidance on adapting research methods to shifting community conditions
- Practical pathways for engaging service providers as key partners
- Connections to practitioners who can amplify findings when the time comes
That's capacity-building. That's what sustainable infrastructure looks like.
Why This Model Matters for Chicago
Dr. Kenfack's research has the potential to shift how Chicago residents, city leaders, and policymakers understand migration, community change, and resource distribution. But the impact doesn't stop with one project.
Every Design Lab strengthens the network of people equipped to advance justice-centered research in Chicago. Every convening builds relationships that extend beyond a single project timeline. Every connection creates potential for future collaboration.
This is how systems work: they create value that compounds over time.
Join the Ecosystem We're Building
IRJ welcomes collaborators who want to strengthen the infrastructure for justice-centered research in Chicago, whether you're Loyola faculty developing community-engaged projects, students seeking real-world research experience, practitioners with frontline insight, or community partners looking for authentic research collaboration.
Ways to engage
- Faculty: Bring your research project to a future Design Lab for strategic feedback and connection-building. Sign up to be a presenting partner.
- Students: Participate in Design Labs as research contributors and learn community-engaged methods in practice
- Community partners and practitioners: Join Design Lab convenings to share expertise and help shape research that matters
- Everyone: Share your perspectives and experiences on migration through surveys, contribute stories or reflections to the audio archive, or explore other ways to support ongoing research initiatives. To get involved, email Dr. Kenfack at mkenfack@chiul.org
The Design Lab model is just one example of how IRJ builds infrastructure for justice-centered work in Chicago. If you're interested in learning more about our approach or exploring partnership opportunities, contact us at racialjustice@luc.edu.
Together, we're not just supporting individual projects. We're building the systems that make meaningful research possible.