Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenor:
-
Jonathan Ngeh
(University of Cologne)
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
Simone Pfeifer
(University of Cologne)
- Format:
- Roundtable
Short Abstract:
The proposed roundtable aims to initiate dialogue and foster conversation on perspectives and practices that promote inclusion and symmetry among all actors involved in research processes.
Long Abstract:
The proposed roundtable, "co-producing knowledge," aims to initiate dialogue and foster conversation on perspectives and practices that promote inclusion and symmetry among all actors involved in research processes. These research actors include, but are not limited to, researchers, co-researchers, collaborators, and other participants (including non-human actors) involved in knowledge production. The roundtable's point of departure is that knowledge production is entangled in power dynamics, making research a significant site of struggle between competing interests and different ways of knowing, often grounded in specific experiences. As such, co-producing knowledge challenges traditional top-down research models and the dominance of any particular form of knowing. Moreover, the co-production of knowledge aligns with the commoning imperative of mutual care to address planetary crises, a key theme of the 2025 DGSKA conference. For example, creating parity in research collaboration can generate inclusive and comprehensive insights for tackling interconnected global issues such as climate change, the threat of nuclear war, and public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The roundtable will address key questions, including how to integrate and enhance inclusive methodological and conceptual frameworks in research from design to publication, address practical and epistemological concerns in research, and explore ways to strengthen an inter- and transdisciplinary approach to joint knowledge production.
Accepted contributions:
Contribution short abstract:
This presentation examines of power dynamics while conducting the revitalization project of "Cancionero Villenense" in Spain and the later compositional process and performing of “The Unknown Spanish Levant series” in Germany, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, and Egypt from 2021 to 2024.
Contribution long abstract:
“The Unknown Spanish Levant series” covers the compilation of nine albums recorded in Spain, Germany, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, and Egypt from 2021 to 2024. The album series entails the author´s compositions inspired by the revitalization of the “cancionero popular Villenense” -conducted by the author through the participation of more than 300 local people- and its historical coexistence with certain musical cultures across the world. This presentation focuses on the examination of power dynamics while conducting the revitalization project local and the later compositional process and performing of “The Unknown Spanish Levant series” in the countries abovementioned. In so doing, the notion of multimusicality -a concept previously used by the author to reconsider intercultural musical practices across regions over four continents since 2011- offers a valuable platform to examine “Shared Musical Knowledges and Creativity” locally and beyond the Iberian Peninsula.
Contribution short abstract:
The proposed contribution focuses on relational ethics in research conducted in England and Brazil, focusing on the experiences of young refugees and Warao Indigenous people. The studies aimed to create an equitable and ethical research process, involving participants' perspectives.
Contribution long abstract:
This paper presents reflections on research ethics beyond the boundaries of procedural requirements. It focuses on a doctoral study investigating how young refugees encountered England’s education system and discusses the relational ethics approach adopted throughout the research. A critical ethnography was conducted using arts-based participatory elements and semi-structured interviews and school-based observations at a secondary school in the south of England. The study’s goals were to amplify participants’ experiences by listening to the young people and their families, building trust with them, setting realistic expectations related to the research and engaging them in discussions about research dissemination plans. The proposed discussion will also draw reflections from a postdoctoral study conducted with the Warao Indigenous people, who have increasingly been displaced in Venezuela and migrated to Brazil. The adopted methodological choices showed that relational ethics is essential to creating an equitable and ethical research process by centring participants’ perspectives rather than the researcher’s. Nevertheless, ethical issues and asymmetric power relations can still cause discomfort within relational research. I aim to reflect on the ethical challenges arising in the relationship between researcher and participants and the challenges encountered to ‘exit the field’.
Contribution short abstract:
Collaborative efforts of inclusion too often continue to uphold power dynamics that perpetuate systemic exclusion and epistemic injustice. This contribution draws on bottom-up, collective cultural practices to advance ideas for equitable commoning of research processes.
Contribution long abstract:
From the cultural sector and academia in Belgium and beyond, diversity initiatives often focus on the inclusion of “the other” without addressing power dynamics, like whiteness, present in collaborative processes. Inclusion, under these conditions, frequently becomes an act of assimilation on white terms rather than a commitment to an equitable commoning of the research process with historically and structurally marginalized groups.
In this contribution, I’d like to critically examine the concepts of “symmetry” and “inclusion,” exploring how they can inadvertently uphold whiteness rather than dismantle the frameworks that perpetuate systemic exclusion and epistemic injustice. Drawing on the works of Grada Kilomba, Tania Cañas, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and others, I learn from experiences of bottom-up and collective meaning-making in cultural spaces, often overlooked by traditional academic approaches and interrogate persistent power dynamics within attempts to make research processes more inclusive. Central to this analysis are questions such as: “How do we equitably common a research process within structures that uphold hierarchy and power dynamics?” and “What safeguards are in place to protect collaborators, particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds, from harm in these spaces?”
This intervention seeks to advance transdisciplinary and cross-sectoral frameworks for joint knowledge production that are rooted in decolonial and equitable principles. Researchers and collaborators are invited to critically question how collaborative and curatorial practices in cultural projects help rethink traditional research processes, recognize and dismantle invisible power lines and create safer spaces for commoning research processes.