Research
Communication:
Check out my recent research communication projects working with my participants from my Doctoral Research
Research Communication:
Continued Dialogues
As part of a series of 4 short web sessions related to Sustainability Dialogues, I organised a dialogue on Action Research with Refugees in Kuala Lumpur web event. Here I reconnected with my participants to discuss what participation and action research means for them. We discussed how researchers and practitioners may be able to be more inclusive. After the dialogue, we had a Q&A from other practitioners in the field of sustainability more generally. The outcome of this dialogue was to stress community inclusion in all aspects of research: allowing space for making decisions and taking initiative in what might best impact their lives. Ultimately, we returned to notions of participation and inclusive when connecting with refugee voices.
You can hear the dialogue at the following link.
Video Link: Sustainability Action Dialogue: Action Research with Refugees
In the video, we have hidden the images of the people who spoke about their experiences of asylum. For this reason, there is no visual from the actual session in the recording only the slides of the talk and a photovoice I previously conducted in the Netherlands.
Research Communication:
Working with Photovoices
Forced migrants are not able to control how they are represented by journalists nor by researchers. They have little control of their own image. The idea of photovoice is to allow some of that control back and can enhance community-based participatory research.
However, capturing photo voices is not simply handing over a camera and asking participants to take photos. Participants get together and discuss the topics that matter to them, and reflect their own reality within the research themes. The outputs can be discussed with the community and disseminated as appropriate - through a gallery show, at an academic conference, or online. Communities are able to take ownership of their image and outputs of research, as well as document their lived realities.
In previous projects and my own research, photovoice has provided a way to connect with communities and discover how they themselves would like to be represented, show their lived experiences and speak directly on the changes they wish to have in their lives.
With storytelling at the centre of the process, the role of the research is that of listener and facilitator, simply providing a safe space for dialogue. Photovoice is used at all levels as a technique for sharing stories, for development, raising critical awareness, advocacy or part of monitoring aspects of a project.
Exhibited in Valorising Voices; Refugee Lives and Voices Exhibition,
In September 2017 at the COST Action IS1306 conference New Speakers in A Multilingual Europe: Policies and Practices in Coimbra University, Portugal
I was a dentist in my country, I now use a toothbrush to clean electronics in this country
Syrian Refugee
from Valorising Voices Photo Exhibition Coimbra University
