AESS is excited to share information about the 2025 keynote address. This year, the Association has the pleasure of hosting Dr. Samuel Leguizamon Grant, who plans to give a speech titled Democratizing Science Praxis in the Climate Crisis: Critical Participatory Action Research with Climate Vulnerable Communities.
Dr. Grant was born in Washington D.C. to two lifelong Black evolutionaries who braided education and organizing to advance common well-being and equitable opportunity. Picking up the legacy from his parents and other ancestors, Sam has embodied an environmental justice approach to facilitating the healing of our relations in the world since 1983. Sam is also a published author, with a co-edited volume coming soon from Bloomsbury Press – Grassroots Responses to Extractivism.
Sam is the Executive Director at Rainbow Research, which he has been leading now for 4 years. Under his leadership, Rainbow has evolved its focus to prioritize environmental justice and climate resilience. Rainbow Research is currently engaged in 11 environmental justice action research initiatives, including the ones listed below:
- Support 4 Black EJCC leaders to design and implement strategies to address environmental justice priorities in the East Metro.
- Working with scientists at the University of Minnesota on two projects addressing flood and drought risk and resilience, one focused in MN, and one focused on the Midwest.
- Co-facilitating a Community Engagement Working Group for the MN Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund. Over 4 years a coalition has worked to establish a small grants program to be coordinated by the MN DNR, which will distribute funds from lottery proceeds each year – in the range of $25 to $28 million.
- We co-founded the Commons Land Community Trust, which is now working to secure an 83 acre parcel to support 75 BIPOC and emerging farmers in SE MN.
- We are supporting the development of 11 African immigrant cooperatives that are forming now, and will all link through a twelfth coop – the MN Pan African Agroecology Cooperative Network. The 60 farmers involved will grow 3 or more rice varieties utilizing the System of Rice Intensification model that emerged in Madagascar in the 1980s. The farmers are doing this in conjunction with Jubilee Justice and Potlikker Capital, with support from the Community Table Cooperative and the Ajani Group’s Gary Hampton.
- Working with Indigenous Environmental Network to analyze and address the negative impacts of extractive industries in Minnesota and Montana on Indigenous population health and Native lands and ceded territories.
Read more about Dr. Grant here:https://rainbowresearch.org/team/dr-samuel-h-leguizamon-grant/
Dr. Sam Grant will be giving the Keynote at the 2025 Conference Welcome on June 23, 2025, 9am CDT. Registration is open. View presenter bios and schedule at the event website: https://site.pheedloop.com/event/AESS2025/