This research project engages with feminist and other critical social, climate and environmental justice literatures to better understand the experiences of rural and coastal fishing community members broadly defined (e.g. to include racialized migrants, people with disabilities, people from lower socioeconomic standings, women and youth) have been integrated into and/or excluded from Canadian fisheries (e.g., harvesting, processing, aquaculture, food and recreational fisheries, sportfishing) through past, present and imagined future infrastructures. Further, it aims to examine how these processes and practices challenge or reinforce systems of inequalities and oppression and shape our relations to marine animals. Finally, it aims to imagine alternative infrastructure designs that are inclusive, just and equitable models of fish-human relations. 

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In addition, the project will build a network of local and international feminist marine and water knowledge holders, conduct a review of fisheries related regulations and policies in Canada, and if Covid- 19 restrictions allow, carry out 6-8 roundtables with members of diverse groups, and conduct walking interviews with selected community members. To carry out the project and to build a longer-term research legacy, the team will build and run an interdisciplinary fisheries research collaborative that draws on feminist equity framing to support trainees and early career fishery researchers at Memorial University and OFI-affiliated scholars.

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'Inclusion, social justice and equity in coastal communities' is part of the Future Ocean and Coastal Infrastructures Consortium, which is funded by the Ocean Frontier Institute through an award from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund. The project team conducts research activities to support the design of infrastructures in changing urban and rural coastal communities in ways that are oriented towards inclusion, social justice and equity. The research is divided into sub-activities that focus on the intersections of ocean and coastal changes with i) the global and local movement of people, (ii) community responses to existing coastal land and ocean infrastructures, (iii) and fishing livelihoods and our relationship to marine animals and life.