Introduction

This capstone showcases my journey through the Social Justice and Human Rights masters program at ASU. It shows my growth as a scholar and working with themes and topics that I have always held near and dear to my heart since the beginning of my academic journey. This capstone will focus on the intersectionality of identity, primarily the LGBTQIA+ identity and an approach to Social Justice and Human Rights topics with intersectionality and nuance in mind, to go beyond reducing queer identities to be just queer because people are many things and that affects how Social Justice and Human Rights effects us. I focus on looking at approaches to issues, like humanitarian efforts and migration, looking at how various aspects of identities interact like immigrant status and queerness, race and queerness, identities within the LGBTQIA+ community, and more. This capstone will show how I bring my thought processes and my held identities into research, how I approach problems in the real world, and how using approaches like this we can work towards more just research practices and solutions.

While the experience and knowledge I have gathered does not translate into a dream of being in academia and furthering research using nuanced and intersectional approaches, it has provided an excellent foundation to bring these concepts into future careers and relationships with other people. The approach of Intersectionality discussed in this capstone is incredibly important as we move forward as a society to better understand individuals and solutions for society's issues. I believe it helps to solidify the numbers in statistics and in academics regarding various groups as people as we include intersectionality and nuance about identity but with academic approaches as well. In writings about politics or economics, it is always important to include, even briefly, perspectives from a social justice approach or a law approach, for example, as it adds to the understanding and grounds the work in reality since reality is complex.

In this capstone I will be sorting through the academic works that I have written throughout the program to highlight the processes, growth, and conclusions I have produced and to not only reflect on that but to discuss how to grow and practice social justice in the future and embody the lessons taught. While highlighting the work I have done I hope to bring in past and present experiences to frame my thinking and directly show the efforts for an intersectional approach. Additionally I hope that any number of audiences can take away valuable information from the content of this Capstone, be it academics, activists, or other folx.