Paper short abstract:

Drawing on collaborative research undertaken with Yezidi women in Iraq and members of the LGBTQI community in Palestine, this contribution considers whether ethnography can become more participatory through auto-ethnographic approaches and how the methods we use can centralise the concept of care.

Paper long abstract:

Emerging out of a recent project that sought to advance decolonial approaches to anthropological research, through this contribution we will share the lessons, findings and challenges encountered in accompanying community activists in designing, conducting, analysing and publishing auto-ethnographic research into everyday embodied experiences of peace and violence in Iraq and Palestine. In doing so, we will together explore participatory aspects of auto-ethnography, where researchers were invited to engage in co-constructing workshops and establishing methodological toolkits from which they could draw, including the likes of body mapping, photo voice and community walks, as well as journalling. By facilitating networks of researchers through regular learning circles, we also highlight the importance of trust (in one another and the process) and the role of friendship in and as method in advancing critical reflection. Through such approaches we illustrate the ways in which the methods we use, might themselves, contribute to a felt sense of peace in an “unwell” world and discuss together how an ethos of care might sit alongside methodological depth and rigour.

Paper short abstract:

Activist communities are interesting settings to experiment with forms of joint knowledge production. While finding shared perspectives and ways to benefit everyone might become non-issues, critique, disagreements and time commitment might be particularly difficult to negotiate care-fully.

Paper long abstract:

Activist communities are particularly interesting settings to experiment with participatory, co-laborative (Niewöhner, 2016) or other forms of joint knowledge production. Activists are not only reacting explicitly to the challenges and changes of our increasingly unwell world, but are also often working with the same theories and concepts as (more) academically affiliated researchers. Those I co-laborate with to examine considerations of intersectionality in anti-racist activism in Flanders, for example, usually read the same texts and engage with the same slogans as me. Finding ways in which the research can benefit everyone engaged might become a non-issue in these contexts where discussions within and between groups constitute learning or networking moments for everyone. But how do we navigate feedback, disagreements and joint growth in such politically delicate contexts where any overt critique risks being used against a group or movement?

Ideally, co-laborating researchers are facilitators who bring people together by organising a space to meet, discuss and create knowledge together. As the ones being paid for the research work, they also offer their time, e.g. by adapting to the other participants’ schedules, by transcribing and writing, or by searching thought-provoking literature. Yet, time is often scarce in the neoliberal university. As co-laborating researchers with a wish to decolonise, to queer and to counter powerful hierarchies, this is a tension we have to constantly re-negotiate by finding creative ways to make time for joint learning, while also protecting our own as well as the other participants’ time commitments as a practice of care.

Paper short abstract:

How can cruising be understood as a reflexive methodology that both maps networks but also participates in the maintenance of that which the researcher sets out to study? Rather than evaluate whether cruising can overcome difference, I propose cruising as a practice in phatic labor.

Paper long abstract:

Cruising can be understood as both a practice in intimacy, premised on the spatiotemporal disjunction of the fleeting encounter, and a mode of apprehending the world which lends itself to seeing or anticipating forms of intimacy and connection in unexpected spacetimes. Rather than focus on evaluating the practice of cruising as one that reproduces social divisions or is able to overcome them as much queer theory has, this contribution will consider how cruising in the field can be approached as a form of phatic labor that both seeks to map networks of actors, but also participates in the very process of establishing the networks themselves. Can cruising as a methodological place diverse actors within the same frame of analysis and what are the terms of inclusion based on this form of participation?

This contribution will reflect on fieldwork conducted in Bengaluru, India, during which I sought to map networks of actors who participated in a non-governmental organization (NGO) job upskilling and placement programs for working-class LGBTQ youth. These youths were largely drawn from an existing pool of precarious sexual health NGO workers whose prior job experience included distributing prophylactics in cruising sites. Shadowing their NGO work, I consider the practices of cruising these NGO workers engaged in and how these same practices could be applied to my own research, which moved across the NGO sector to include the large corporate organizations where these same actors sought employment.

Paper short abstract:

Based on a fieldwork with Rwandan sex workers, I argue that art-based participatory methods offer interlocutors means to engage themselves in research. Photo-elicited narratives, a fashion photo shoot and a visual workshop created trust and intimacy between myself and my interlocutors.

Paper long abstract:

Based on my yearlong fieldwork experience, conducted in Rwanda in 2019, I argue that art-based participatory methods and practical hands-on workshops offer ways for the research interlocutors to immerse themselves further in research. I study Rwandan female and trans sex workers' cosmopolitan practises and livelihoods. Early on in my research, I discovered that the post-genocide society (silence, trauma and issues of trust) as well as the stigma associated with my interlocutors (illegal status quo) made interviewing and participant observation at times challenging. What is more, the Ebola outbreak during my fieldwork forced me to implement novel ways to continue my research. By providing disposable cameras to my interlocutors and by studying their personal photo archives I conducted photo-elicited narratives. Together with a local artist, I organised a fashion photo shoot, which helped to understand my interlocutors' aesthetic inspirations and performances. Finally, I organised a visual workshop, where my interlocutor made collages of images that represented their future dreams and desires. Integrating hands-on and art-based participation methods led me to discover aspects that would have otherwise been unseen. What is more, these interactions created trust and intimacy between myself and my interlocutors. To conclude, feminist, hands-on and art-based participatory methods can relieve some of the hierarchies and hindering dynamics in ethnographic research and at their best offer means to do research in the challenging (post) pandemic world.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing from manifestos of convivial methodologies (Berg & Nowicka 2019) and the play ethic (Kane 2011), we engage in a playful exploration of a range of collaborative methods to better understand the life-worlds and futuremaking of labour migrants and commuters on the Polish-German border.

Paper long abstract:

While collaboration has become nearly a prerequisite for considering visual research worthwhile, collaborative visual research can mean many different things and a line between collaboration and exploitation is often thin. In this contribution we want to think both creatively and critically about collaborative visual methods. Drawing from manifestos of convivial methodologies (Berg & Nowicka 2019) on the one hand and the play ethic (Kane 2011) on the other, we propose a playful exploration of a range of collaborative methods, a “menu” from which to choose or start further collaborative search with our research participants/partners.

The aim is to design research which is not “ethical” in the sense of ticking boxes of ethical commissions preoccupied with legal responsibility, but moral, in line with our own consciences. As the play ethic is about having the confidence to be spontaneous, creative and emphatic, we would like to use a research design that is centred around the passions and enthusiasm of our research partners and ourselves. Getting ready for work with

migrant and trans-border workers within our project, we are interested in “non-linear ways of knowing and transmitting multiple worlds” which will be useful and fulfilling both for us and the people with whom we will research.

Coming from a convivial perspective that focuses on the art and practice of living together in solidarity despite differences, we are interested in how visual output can contribute to transmitting the multiple life-worlds of mobile workers, finding proximity to wider audiences, and working towards more sustainable communities.

Paper short abstract:

I present questions and provocations that stem from my identity as a trans queer researcher entering and working with communities of sex workers during a pandemic, raising questions on ethical research during and post a situation like a pandemic.

Paper long abstract:

I present a short provocation on doing slow, intentional, dynamic research with vulnerable communities amidst growing concerns from grassroots collectives on the use of research that is often solely extractive. I do this by asking questions/providing examples of sex worker-led research where non-sex working researchers learn to listen, follow, and collaborate from the beginning to the end and how this may be possible in a pandemic/post-pandemic environment where the participants and the researcher both are struggling, but also experience the struggle differently because of their own social privileges/disprivileges.