Paper short abstract:

Live methods as creative research practices, inspired by participatory action research, verbatim and forum theatre constitute politically transformative and critical methods that brings those situated outside of traditionally centred subjectivities -migrants, women, exiled, refugees- back to centre.

Paper long abstract:

In my PhD research I explore the practices and meanings of Indian citizenship for the Tibetans living in exile in India. The research focuses on the lived experiences of the Tibetans in the period 2015-2020 in the broader framework of what it means to be a Tibetan living in India in current times, but also asking how can a migrant and refugee have access to Indian citizenship and what are the advantages and limitations of citizenship as conferred by the Indian state. The rich data emerging from the ethnographic research conducted in 2016-2017 shows that the question of Indian citizenship is a debatable and critical possibility for both young and older generations of Tibetans living in India.

By using Forum Theatre as a tool in the last ethnographic fieldwork of my PhD research (2019) I engage with the research participants in a way that enables them to assert, express and perform their embodied agency insofar as both the researcher and the participants can be transformed in an inter-relational processes of becoming. As a research tool, the Forum theatre workshops have the potential to produce rich forms of knowledge, starting with the use of the body, emotions and culture (Kaptani and Yuval-Davis, 2008). Forum theatre espoused with ethnographic methods can produce transformative and emancipatory research about identity and citizenship of Tibetans living in India.