The Trust Workers Project: Challenges and Methods of Building Trust into Public Scholarship

The TrustWorkers Project: Challenges and Methods of Building Trust into Public Scholarship. (May 2023)  Authors:  Cristian Capotescu (INCITE Institute, Columbia University); Elizabeth Cohn (Hunter College, City University of New York); Gil Eyal (INCITE Institute, Columbia University); Judelysse Gomez (Hunter College, City University of New York); Jack LaViolette (INCITE Institute, Columbia University); Danielle Lee Tomson (Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University)  in  Public Philosophy Journal, Volume 5, Issue 1 | 2023 DOI: 10.59522/CIOU2388.  

The TrustWorkers Project: Challenges and Methods of Building Trust into Public Scholarship

• May 2023
• Public Philosophy Journal 5(1)

DOI:10.59522/CIOU2388

Authors: Cristian Capotescu; Elizabeth Cohn; Gil Eyal; Judelysse Gomez; Jack LaViolette; Danielle Lee Tomson

Abstract

This article grapples with a critical question in public humanities work: How should academics think of trust as a theoretical problem in current public health, policy, and academic debates but also as a practice of engagement with local communities and collaborators outside the academy? We recount our experience of the TrustWorkers project at Columbia University in 2022—a project focused on the critical role of Community Health Workers as trust builders during the pandemic—to illustrate our thinking on this matter and contribute new impulses to publicly engaged scholarship.