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- Convenors:
-
Chloé Buire
(Les Afriques dans le Monde - CNRS)
Laura A. Nkula-Wenz (African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Streams:
- Urban Studies (x) Decoloniality & Knowledge Production (y)
- Location:
- Philosophikum, S75
- Sessions:
- Friday 2 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
How can academic projects open spaces of expression for young people? Reflecting on first-hand experiences of collaborative research, this panel interrogates the practical, political, and ethical opportunities and challenges of researchers working in partnership with youth.
Long Abstract:
The demand to make research relevant, accessible and empowering is particularly high when young people take part in a project. Whether through art-based methods, multimedia interfaces or more informal engagements, creative tools are privileged, and deep immersion becomes almost unavoidable.
Beyond general ideas of interdisciplinarity and reflexivity, this panel seeks to unravel the specificities of this kind of engaged research. How do we navigate variegated expectations within a team mixing academic and non-academic partners? What kind of tools do we mobilise in the different phases of a project (defining the objectives, collecting materials, writing and disseminating results)? How do affective relationships and political landscapes influence the research process and its outcomes? And last but not least, how does working collaboratively affect our ways of understanding and deepens our reciprocal capacity to listen to each other?
Based on first-hand experiences, the contributions will reflect on the possibilities but also on the objections raised by collaborative approaches with a special attention to the position of young people in the process. Our objective is to unpack the practicalities of youth-oriented research and explore new terrains of engagement, including through critical pedagogy. We also want to interrogate how academic methods can embrace multiple ways of knowing and eventually contribute to broader agendas of social change.
We welcome unconventional formats (artistic products, performances, multimedia…) and contributions from collectives beyond the University. Proposals can be submitted in English, French, German or Portuguese.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 2 June, 2023, -Andrea Hollington (University of Mainz) Colin Reilly (University of Essex) Hannah Gibson (h.gibsonessex.ac.uk) Nico Nassenstein (JGU Mainz)
Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates African youth language by discussing collaborative research methods that involve young speakers. As creators of linguistic practices, youths are important players in the shaping of language ecologies and in understanding how these language practices work.
Paper long abstract:
Youth are often considered as leaders of linguistic change. Studies on African youth language practices have illustrated the creative development of and critical engagement with language practices especially (but not exclusively) in multilingual and diverse urban settings (e.g. Mensah 2016, Hurst-Harosh & Kanana Erastus 2018). In our collaborative research project on African youth language practices, we investigate the grammatical, stylistic and sociolinguistic development of language through working together with young speakers in Eastern and Southern Africa. Apart from interviews and participant observation, we also work together with African youth by actively engaging them in knowledge production processes. As makers of youth culture and youth language, young speakers exhibit diverse creative skills, not only as linguistic engineers but also as experts on researching these practices. The linguistic ideologies and theoretical knowledge of young speakers regarding their own as well as others’ linguistic performances are crucial in the understanding of youth languages and linguistic change at large. In this talk, we seek to explore and discuss our methods of and experiences with collaborative research with African youths.
Maïa Ghattas (Pole de Recherche pour l'Organisation et la Diffusion de l'Information Géographique)
Paper short abstract:
En suivant la production d’un documentaire de recherche-création sur la mémoire du héros nationaliste camerounais Ruben Um Nyobe, cette communication interroge l’espace d’expression ouvert par cette expérience filmée pour la troupe de jeunes danseurs du collectif KUNDE.
Paper long abstract:
En 2019, je soutiens ma thèse sur les enjeux de la patrimonialisation à Douala au Cameroun, et j’y interroge la porosité entre les concepts d’art contemporain et de patrimoine dans le contexte camerounais actuel. Parfois, la patrimonialisation semble se faire par la performance, comme dans le cas du groupe de danse KUNDE qui reprend et re-chorégraphie des danses dites traditionnelles pour transmettre la mémoire occultée de l’indépendance nationale camerounaise. En 2020 – 2021, j’entreprends une résidence de recherche création au sein du Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains de Lille. L’école de cinéma accueille le projet notamment pour son intérêt à « aborder des problématiques de recherche par la forme ». Le film accompagne le collectif de danse KUNDE dans son processus de création et documente sa réinterprétation artistique contemporaine de la mémoire du héros national, Ruben Um Nyobe. Ce travail d’un an (choix des contacts, des lieux, écriture du scénario en résidence et tournage en équipe réduite et en itinérance) se veut le plus collaboratif possible. Dans cette communication, je souhaite questionner l’apport de cette démarche collaborative et la construction ou non d’un espace d’expression par le film pour le groupe KUNDE. Pour cela, nous analyserons les conditions de production mais également la réception du documentaire par différents publics (artistes, producteurs, chercheurs au Cameroun et en France). Il s’agira plus largement de contribuer à une réflexion sur la recherche-création et sur les possibilités et les difficultés qu’elle génère pour le chercheur et les artistes.
Paula Meth (University of Sheffield) Margot Rubin (Cardiff University) Sarah Charlton (University of the Witwatersrand) Eshetayehu Kinfu
Paper short abstract:
Our project focusing on young people's work & housing in Ethiopia and South Africa built in 'invited collaborative' opportunities. This paper investigates collaborative media outputs and key project events, querying their unevenness, operation, meaning, temporalities and emotions.
Paper long abstract:
A Youth Futures research project focusing on young people's work/housing nexus in Hawassa, Ethiopia and the Ekangala area, South Africa built in opportunities for invited collaboration with youth participants (see Rubin et al, 2022 and project website). This paper focuses less on the primary data collection for the project (also in part collaborative - see Rubin et al 2022) and instead investigates our efforts to collaborate through the production of varied media outputs (podcasts, stories, videos, poetry, song etc), selected by the youth participants and facilitated through our project. It examines the possibilities and limitations of these invited collaborative spaces and processes, noting how practicalities and wider politics of knowledge production shape final outputs and their meaning. It considers also the operation, mishaps and unfolding of arguably less collaborative interventions (including the partial use of official photographers with some participants) and consequent project/public events (two project workshops, one policy workshop, three in person exhibitions and an online exhibition) where much of these media outputs were exhibited and narrated. We argue that although collaborative research is often lauded as less extractive and more empowering for participants, our work reveals it is often uneven in its benefits, raising uncomfortable questions about how to end or sustain relationships post research completion, flagging that the temporalities of collaboration are complex. The paper queries what collaboration with youth in practice reveals across these multiple spaces, what collaborative outputs are produced and their attendant emotional registers, and for which audiences this collaboration is meaningful.
Claire Dungey (King's College London) Gina Porter (Durham University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper reflects on the ethics of involving young female peer researchers in data collection and research outputs in a research project in three African cities. We discuss how this approach requires flexibility in ongoing collaborations and constant attentiveness to power/structural constraints.
Paper long abstract:
This paper draws upon an interdisciplinary research project (2019-2022) that focused on women’s transport-related experiences both as transport users and as workers in the transport sector in Tunis, Abuja and Cape Town. We discuss the ethical issues raised at various stages of involvement – from project design to data collection, but also when developing outputs with peer researchers. We explore the difficulties that arise, e.g., when peer researchers experience financial or emotional struggles and need to pause the project for various reasons.
While peer research requires working closely with partners on the ground, any collaboration also involves power dynamics and different levels of involvement. Peer researchers were invited to present their ideas at policy workshops but were also constrained by slow internet connections that limited their options to present findings in online engagements after the onset of COVID-19.
How can we protect the identity of peer researchers who are known to their study communities, while at the same time recognising peer researchers as co-authors? How can involvement take place when there are various structural barriers- such as lack of available transport to travel, curfews that limit interactions or few options to access stable internet? The paper reflects on these issues and how research requires flexibility – e.g., the option to ‘opt in’ or ‘out’ of research - but also the active involvement of local partners who can facilitate access on the ground.