The demands for literacy research to make sense of or provide the guiding light for the ongoing instructional, political, cultural, institutional, and geographic currents dictate that our role as literacy researchers should be reflective, responsive, timely, and forward-looking. Our supreme challenge is interrupting stubborn hierarchies that persist across social and scientific landscapes despite rigorous research, sophisticated analyses, and a strong methodological and theoretical canvas.

Therefore, we must continue to engage in serious study to interrogate longstanding research findings that have not interrupted longstanding educational hierarchies that suffocate the humanity of far too many who have their literacy development denied, delayed, disrupted, or diminished.

The promise of literacy research leads me to ask, how do we catalyze methodological and theoretical strengths to expand the resuscitating power of literacy research to shape positive life-outcome trajectories? How do we build our capacity and strengthen our resolve to conduct research and communicate findings in highly ethical and responsible ways that leverages our global research musculature?

Moreover, how do we interrogate hierarchies to build a humanitarian literacy research architecture that binds? Thus, the theme for the 73rd Annual Conference of the Literacy Research Association.