Overview
Kay Jowers directs the Just Environments Program, a joint initiative between Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and the Kenan Institute for Ethics. Her work focuses on bringing scholars, students, and community co-researchers together to understand the structural sources of environmental and climate injustices and challenge the deeply held assumptions that perpetuate them.
Through partnerships grounded in research and data justice principles, her collaborations focus on generating research and policy solutions that address the traditional issues of alleviating environmental burdens as well as on creating healthy sustainable communities with access to quality and affordable housing, food, green spaces, utilities, etc. She also directs the Environmental Justice Lab, where students, faculty, and community partners work together to use computational social science methods to study environmental inequality and assess the efficacy of policy solutions.
She holds a J.D. with a concentration in environmental law from Tulane University Law School, a master's degree in environmental health sciences from the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and a bachelor's degree in anthropology from the University of South Carolina.