Research & Praxis

The Center for Trans Futures is not only a service organization but also a site of knowledge production. Our programs, governance practices, and community processes are shaped by participatory, community-embedded research that treats lived experience as expertise.

This approach recognizes that many institutional failures affecting trans people are not accidental. They are the result of policy design, administrative practices, and decision-making frameworks that exclude trans voices while claiming neutrality or universality.

Our work responds by building practical alternatives.

Participatory embedded research

Participatory embedded research means that research is conducted within the community under study, rather than from a distance. At the Center for Trans Futures, this includes:

  • Designing programs with community members rather than extracting data from them
  • Treating feedback, facilitation experiences, and implementation challenges as meaningful evidence
  • Revising practices based on lived outcomes, not just stated intentions

Community members are not subjects; they are collaborators whose knowledge shapes how programs evolve.

Positionality and community-rooted research

The research informing the Center for Trans Futures is conducted by Casey Renée Lopez (they/them), a doctoral candidate at the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University. Casey is a trans researcher, educator, and organizer who is also a member of the local trans community this work serves. Their positionality matters and shapes how questions are asked, how trust is built, and how accountability is practiced.

Rather than approaching the community as a site of extraction, this work emerges from shared experience and shared stakes. Participation extends beyond data collection and includes relationship building, facilitation, mutual care, and the co-creation of spaces where trans people can come together, reflect, and imagine futures beyond institutional harm. However, before engaging with community members in conversations, data collection, or other activities, Casey will obtain approval from Virginia Commonwealth University’s (VCU) Human Research Protection Program (HRPP) and Institutional Review Board (IRB).

Participatory research is not neutral; indeed, it is relational, and it recognizes that bringing people together, creating safer spaces, and supporting collective community actions are themselves forms of knowledge production. Participatory research allows community members to articulate needs, test ideas, and build solidarity in ways that formal institutions rarely permit.

This approach strengthens both the research and the organization by ensuring that theory remains accountable to lived experiences, and that practice remains informed by critical reflection. The Center for Trans Futures exists at this intersection, where trans led research and community building are inseparable.

Praxis as accountability

Praxis is the integration of theory and action. Casey understands praxis as accountability to real-world consequences. To that end, research at the Center for Trans Futures is inseparable from practice. Ideas are tested through implementation, and policies are evaluated through their effects on trans people’s safety, dignity, and access to resources, and perhaps most importantly, when something does not work, it is reassessed.

Connection to doctoral research

The Center for Trans Futures is directly informed by doctoral research at the intersection of interpretive public administration and queer and trans theory, examining how institutions systematically fail trans people through misrecognition, exclusion, and administrative harm. This is, arguably, a design feature of the system we live inside, not a design flaw.

This research focuses on:

  • How policies are interpreted and implemented in practice
  • How transgender communities experience administrative systems
  • How trans-led, self-determined governance models can produce better outcomes for marginalized communities

The Center for Trans Futures serves as a living application of this scholarship by translating research questions into operational structures, governance norms, and transferable service-delivery models.

Trans separatist governance as an applied framework

Within this research context, trans separatism is understood as a radical applied administrative framework in the same way other beneficiary spaces are maintained. It prioritizes:

  • Trans led decision making
  • “T4T” community space
  • Clear boundaries around participation and governance
  • Protection from institutional practices that require trans people to justify their existence

Rather than being purely theoretical, this framework is tested through operation, program design, and community governance.

Knowledge sharing and ethics

We are committed to ethical knowledge sharing. This means:

  • Transparency about how insights are generated
  • Respect for community privacy and consent
  • No extraction of data without a clear purpose and benefit
  • Transparancy regarding stewardship of funds to support community programming

Any research outputs, such as publications, presentations, and reports, are grounded in existing practices that serve the community.

Why this matters

Too often, research about trans communities reinforce the very systems that harm them. By integrating research into a trans led organization, we offer an intervention and attempt to reverse this dynamic. The Center for Trans Futures demonstrates how community-governed, participatory research can inform policy, improve practice, and build sustainable alternatives to failing institutions.