What are 'Voicescapes'?

This blog will follow the journey of Nepal's Voicescape throughout the MSCA fellowship. I will share reflections from the field, methodological thinking, emerging ideas, and honest accounts of what participatory research looks and feels like in practice. If you have questions, connections in Nepal, or simply want to follow along, I would love to hear from you.

This Friday, I will post my first MSCA Voicescapes blog, reflecting on my challenges as - currently functionally disabled - woman of colour, with PTSD, navigating complex research institutions, fundings and participatory fieldwork. I aim to post every last Friday of the month from now on.

'Voicescape' was a term I chose when considering the concept of the borderscape; a framework that understands borders not as fixed lines but as lived, contested spaces shaped by power, movement, and exclusion. I dislike the use of the term 'voice' as a buzzword; I do not believe in raising or amplifying voices, nor giving voices. It is very easy to see the idea of voice as performative.

I want us to think about those words 'performative' and 'performance'. Elaine Scarry, in her book on pain, talks about how the first thing we do as humans is cry out. That's our first performative moment: our first act is to transform pain immediately to sound. This is our first transformation. But as we get older we forget to do this. We suffer pain in silence as trauma buried deep inside us. Collectively we take systemic injustices and embed all of that into our bodies. Trauma of this systemic violence lives in the acts of speaking by people who have been silenced. By giving shape and words to those injustices that we start to see real agency and resistance. That resistance comes from the moment when violence situated in our bodies is transformed to voice. Voice is therefore the movement of pain, violence and silence to speech. It is a performance, but a necessary one.

It is on this site of voice that I hope my participatory research and work situates itself; with and alongside communities who are already speaking and acting on their questions of justice. Voicescape therefore refers to the voices embedded and entangled in borders as they seek change.

Voicescape is funded through a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Antwerp, and will have the fieldwork based in Kathmandu, Nepal. It explores how displaced and stateless women voice rights and belonging in the face of legal exclusion. Nepal's citizenship laws have long tied a woman's legal identity to a male relative, leaving many women without papers, and without access to healthcare, education, or legal protection.

The project is grounded in participatory action research and storytelling, working with women as co-researchers rather than subjects of study.