Paper short abstract:

Based on a yearlong ethnography this paper argues that art-based participatory methods (auto-photography) and visual workshops (fashion shoots and 'dream boards') carve space for marginalised interlocutors to shape research and create intimacy and trust between the researcher and their participants.

Paper long abstract:

Based on a yearlong ethnography, conducted in Rwanda in 2019, this paper argues that art-based participatory methods and visual workshops carve space for marginalised interlocutors to shape research and create intimacy between the researcher and their participants. In my study of Rwandan female and trans sex workers’ cosmopolitan practises and livelihoods, I discovered that the post-genocide society (silence, trauma, lack of trust) and the stigma associated with sex work (illegality) proved interviewing and participant observation fruitless at times. Furthermore, an Ebola outbreak reduced certain interactions and thus forced me to implement novel ways of continuing my research. By providing disposable cameras to the sex workers I conducted photo-elicited narratives. Together with a local artist, I organised a fashion photo shoot, which helped me to understand my interlocutors’ aesthetic inspirations and performances. Finally, I organised a visual workshop, where my interlocutors built collages of images (‘dream boards’) to represent their future dreams and desires. Together these participatory methods brought out new components to the study and visually exemplified the lived realities of the sex workers through their own eyes. Moreover, these interactions created trust and intimacy between myself and my interlocutors; from the practicalities of teaching how to use material means, to us discovering the visual results together. For the future of social research in Africa to be more inclusive, feminist and anti-colonial, it can benefit from art-based participatory methods - as they can be useful in the (post) pandemic world with its limitations to mobility.

Paper short abstract:

SELF[i]EXPOSURE was a research project which combined photovoice and practice-led research methods to challenge dialogues normalising gender-based discrimination. Participants used smartphones to take photos expressing their experiences of gender. This paper reflects on the project and its outcomes.

Paper long abstract:

In 2022, I led an experimental research project called SELF[i]EXPOSURE (funded by an Edinburgh Catalyst Non-residential Research Fellowship) with a group of students at the Centre for Visual Arts, University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa). Using a mixed methodology that combined photovoice and practice-led research, participants used smartphones to take photographs that they felt captured their own experiences of gender. After feedback sessions where students ‘spoke back’ to their pictures, students chose an image, or selection of images, to be exhibited in the department Gallery. The project hoped to contribute to social change by investigating what possibilities there may be for reflexive expressions of gender through the familiar process of smartphone photography. The hypothesis was that through capturing their experiences of gender in a process of thoughtful image creation, students could be empowered to develop critical consciousness. Exhibiting the photographs extended the conversation into the university community and beyond, hopefully raising (community and self-) awareness of GBV and other forms of gendered violence. What made this project particularly interesting is that the participants were art students, and thus already possessed developing skills in visual meaning-making, and were thus well-placed to engage in this process of empowered self-representation through visual language. The proposed paper will reflect on the this project and what it has yielded. Specifically, what artistic potential did the process hold, and what might it have contributed to challenging dialogues which normalise sexual and gender-based discrimination.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation uses photographs and documentary videos to showcase the perspectives, experiences, and methods of resistance of queer people and feminists from Sudan. Materials were collected as part of a Ph.D. project and analyzed using gender media studies and Audio-Visual Character Analysis.

Paper long abstract:

The queer community in Sudan faces significant social marginalization and is barely represented in mainstream media. Or if there is any semblance of visibility, the community is represented as a social problem that needs to be solved. This lack of/problematic representation and visibility makes it difficult to understand the experiences and history of the community which in turn makes documentation an impossibility. This is compounded by gaps in academic research and political communication for advocacy purposes.

The aim of this presentation is to experiment with visual representation in order to foreground the voices of queer and feminist women from Sudan, their experiences, stories, and methods of resistance. The presentation draws on a collection of photographs and documentary videos I have been working on as part of my Ph.D. project, which explores the history and praxis of queer and feminist activism in Sudan.

I produced the audio-visual project while conducting my fieldwork in Sudan from May to October 2022. In the talk, I will present the project and give a detailed account of the process of its production. In order to have a more nuanced understanding of the queer community and to challenge dominant narratives and stereotypes, I analyze the audiovisual materials through the use of relevant theories and frameworks such as gender media studies, Audio-Visual Character Analysis (ACIS), and ethnomethodological studies in sociology.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I use participatory video to document women's experiences in conflict situations. Rethinking the way knowledge is produced, reflects concerns about the ways knowledge on local women in the global south, are manipulated, with concerns about which voices are heard.

Paper long abstract:

In thinking about the extent to which participatory methodologies opens up new insights and facilitates the processes of co-production of knowledge at the local level, my work highlights that although leadership happens everywhere, for most of the women in the Niger Delta it poses a major challenge. It is one where the toxic model of patriarchy and associated inequalities come to play. Women leaders are not empowered or given a voice in charting the development agendas of most of the communities. Participatory approaches and methodologies have long been advocated as a means to generate knowledge that addresses power inequalities, passing power from researcher(s) to research participants (Chambers 1997), and endorsing diverse perspectives of social realities as endogenous knowledge. Young women in the communities I engaged with are asking for empowerment and also roles in the discussions in conflict settings, they argue for equal participation on a levelled platform. In particular issues such as fear, poverty, violence against women and girls, inequalities, relegation of women, as well as resource related environmental issues are depicted using the women's own voices. Perhaps more leadership opportunities for women in the region could lead to changes in personal and collective values and also behaviour towards improving and entrenching nonviolence in addressing the Niger Delta issues. In this project, I used participatory videos to document local women's experiences, needs and hopes from their own perspectives in relation to developmental issues and conflict

Paper short abstract:

I reflect on two experiences of visual research: #EverydayNile, a transdisciplinary collaboration with photojournalists from Nile basin countries, and a participatory visual research with Algerian youth to elicit an inter-generational conversation on a traditional system for groundwater management.

Paper long abstract:

I reflect on two experiences of visual research: the first, #EverydayNile, involves a transdisciplinary collaboration with photojournalists from different Nile basin countries to represent stories of everyday practices, uses and relations with water and the river; the second project is a participatory visual research with youth in the M’zab valley (Algeria), exploring the traditional systems of groundwater management used by their parents and grandparents, and imagining their future and the future of their oasis.

Reflecting on these two projects I discuss:

- working at or from the margins: when, and how, should we attempt to bring the margins at the centre of the political debate and decision-making process, and how the visual can empower us to achieve this goal;

- how to build trans-disciplinary collaborations between researchers, practitioners and communicators (photographers, journalists, …);

- how to combine different aesthetics, and how to publish and promote the photos and other visual material produced, including on social media;

- visual storytelling to imagine alternative futures and empowering narratives against mainstream discourses on the water or climate crisis.

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the reflection and evaluation of visual participatory methods during fieldwork research on people with albinism in Zambia, focused on perception of their own "otherness" and "sameness" in different social contexts, both in the past and in the present.

Paper long abstract:

The paper discusses innovative methodological approaches of visual ethnographic research of people with albinism in Zambia. Our reflection and evaluation of visual participatory methods (photo elicitation, autoethnographic photo diary, drawings) is based on our research in eastern Zambia that focused on the perception of everyday life of people with albinism and their experience with multifaceted discrimination, social discrimination and physical violence. In contrast to other African countries that have implemented legislative measures to protect people with albinism (Tanzania, Mozambique), Zambia remains among countries, where people with albinism continue to experience multifaceted discrimination and social stigmatization. Research objective was to interpret participants´ perception of their own "otherness" and "sameness" in different social contexts, both in the past and in the present. We focused at memory narrative level of interpretation of lived experience through technique of biographical interview combined with method of photo elicitation, that uses photographic records to evoke memory in areas neglected during verbally anchored interviews. We further used autoethnographic photo diary, through which the respondents themselves documented their own perception of lived social reality "now and here". We also used a technique of drawing for children with albinism, which enabled reflect on their own feelings and understanding of internalized attitudes and perceptions shared by wider society. These visual participatory methods producing alternative forms of narration enabled democratization of data and allowed our respondents to be co-producers of knowledge.

Paper short abstract:

Makoko is a widely covered community in Lagos, Nigeria. Within a photo workshop in Makoko, Lagos, research participants visualized how they wish the community's everyday lives were portrayed. Group discussions uncovered the ethical vacuum that surrounds coverage of Makoko.

Paper long abstract:

Photography has historically been used to convey a "truthful“ image to support a hegemonial narrative. In Holocaust camps, Jewish prisoners were portrayed as though they were merely in a work camp, and enjoyed their time while playing chess. During colonial times, exploitation and imposition were masked through the means of photography. Pictures were meant to advance the imperial agenda and justify colonization while solidifying discourses of European superiority.

Today, Makoko is a widely covered place, visually and narratively. The non-verbal language is often one of deprivation, otherness, subalternity and the need for "developing“ the place through expertise to be found outside rather than inside Makoko. Makoko residents do not have a say in their depiction and cameras have become a very negative symbol of exploitation.

My PhD research looks at the social production of water and health entanglements in the communities of Makoko. As part of the methodology, I organized a participatory photography project with a theoretical and technical component. 11 research participants engaged in a group discussion on photography as language, how Makoko is portrayed in popular media outlets and what this does to the feeling of belonging and confidence of those portrayed. We discussed concepts of marginalization, how otherness is created and how visual language can help introduce a perspective when the use of (hegemonial) language is skewed. A technical skills workshop (by a photographer) provided the basics of photography, which were then applied in two photowalks. The results will be presented in the panel discussion and paper.

Paper short abstract:

Beyond abstraction and homogenisation, this presentation reflects on three collective multimodal projects that seek to attend to and transpose the polysemy of our lived world through reassemblage, that is, the exploration of resonances and frictions between methods, mediums and genres.

Paper long abstract:

Anthropology and relates disciplines have historically strived to tell a single, often textual story and create a dialogue among ‘us’ about ‘them’. Decentering such prerogatives requires close attention to and a transposition of the polysemy of the lived world. This bears the questions: how can we bring different (collective) methods into correspondence with each other? And how can we fragment different representational forms such as text and image and reconfigure their hierarchical relation?

In this textual-audio/visual presentation, I reflect on three collective multimodal projects that explore principles of reassemblage, that is, resonances and frictions between methods, mediums and genres. Such reassemblage embraces multivocality not as parallelism but as undoing boundaries to evoke sensuality and imagination; reflexivity and critique.

A performative reading together with the Senegalese poet Issa Sarr Damaan combined video and text alternating in two languages. As a ‘dialogue with gaps’, it highlighted the partiality of translation and questioned the dominance of (predicative) knowledge from the Global North.

A forthcoming graphic novel together with the Senegalese digital visual artist Pamplumus combines text with drawings and photos. This mixed media approach mobilises the productive friction between the fictional and the documentary for postcolonial reflexivity and the sensuous imagination of possible deltaic futures.

Finally, the forthcoming short film ‘Mollusc Lifeworlds’ builds on collective filming with delta dwellers. It forges a patterned confrontation of (un)likely human and more-than-human perspectives that seek to both evoke a speculative multispecies sensuality and a critical reflection on Eurocentric perception and narrativity.

Paper short abstract:

Combining visual gears with joint visual analysis, the ‘Participatory Videography’ lays the basis for present and future focussed ethnographic research, which aims to be ethically responsive to both research participants and scientists in South-North collaborations, working with videographic data.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is based on an application submitted to the German Research Foundation, which draws on pilot-phase video footage of highly skilled migrants in Dakar and Berlin. We will present first empirical findings on the participants’ initial spatial (dis)orientation in the respective city. We both address palpable restrictions of collaborative visual research, such as funding, mobility, and visual tools but also the ‘Senegalese’ and ‘German’ dialogue on positionalities and their theoretical implications.

Visual ethnographic methods had a long standing history as part of the colonial matrix, exoticising ‘the Other’ and perpetuating who is collecting visual data of whom. Recent scholarly debates in the Global North became more aware of the implicit power imbalances of seeing and the biased regimes that reproduce gender, racist or ableist discrimination (Ahmed 2007).

Yet still, the sociology of knowledge struggles with video-based ethnographies conducted outside of “one’s own culture” (Knoblauch 2021). The authors of this paper argue that their ‘Participatory Videography’ combining First-Person-Perspective-Camera from Visual Anthropology (Lahlou 2011, Pink 2015), and videography (Knoblauch 2021), evades these afformentioned dichotomies. In addition, joint Video Analysis (Knoblauch et al. 2006) and, theoretical-reflexive comparison adress limitations of mutual understanding, invisible or silenced facets of empirical research and consequently the construction of social roles and theories, scientists are informed by. Dialogue as a possibility of co-interpretation is seen as a pivot point to question the epistemological assumptions that ground one’s own interpretations in specific contexts (Baur 2021). This multi-methods approach opens for novel reflections on spatiotemporal concepts such as ‘(dis)orientation’.

Paper short abstract:

Here we take an individual approach to study the experiences and interpretations of illness and pain. We use the participative visual analysis method Photovoice, where the informant takes the place and authority of co-researcher, through pictures, shares her own definition of her illness experience

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, we highlight the interpretative viewpoint of the “informant” or “researched”, who most times have a say only through the sometimes “altered” viewpoint of the researcher. Using photovoice as a tool, we aim to raise awareness, capture individual illness narratives and encourage ownership of health interventions on female genital schistosomiasis affecting the health and lives of women and girls. This work was carried out in the West region of Cameroon, around remote fishing communities lacking necessary social structures for disease management. We set out to find the social representations of the disease and lived experiences from infected women around this condition. Here, they[informants] take ownership and present their own interpretations, capturing communicative, expressive, and symbolic aspects of their lived experiences through descriptive pictures which tell their own tale.

Through our use of photovoice, such representations become a politically sensitive activity, when peoples who were formerly only the objects of image-making (basic visual anthropology), now control the rights and choices to tell their own stories with the images of their choosing. The objective here is not for these women to emerge as victims, but as women, girls, mothers, wives, sisters, daughters; all activists and collaborators in the quest of their flourishing as humans, more specifically, for their rights to good health, equity, and their own futures. This offers a strength in the ownership of local voices, futures and challenges, which is necessary for the step forward for Africa and its inhabitants, not leaving their destiny and voices to “others”.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the potential of the research exhibition to tackle three ethical challenges in fieldwork: power imbalances between researcher and researched; co-creation rather than extraction; and the sharing of knowledge generated.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I think about the potential of the research exhibition to tackle three ethical challenges in fieldwork: power imbalances between researcher and researched; co-creation rather than extraction; and the sharing of knowledge generated.

I am currently working on a series of three exhibitions to showcase and extend a large comparative research project on state buildings in Africa. It focuses on processes of ‘Building Africa’ since independence, exploring how institutions and identities have been made by and through architecture. The exhibitions are being created in collaboration with designers in Accra, Addis Ababa and Johannesburg, each of whom has been asked to interpret the project’s initial findings in their own way. Each exhibition will be shown in the city where the research was carried out, made as accessible as possible to the people who participated in it, and draw in visitors’ evaluations of the work through group discussions and other forms of feedback to develop the findings.

The exhibitions are being staged through the first half of 2023. The paper will reflect on the process of co-designing and staging with three different architects ¬– particularly on the ways power was shared during the process. It will explore the degree to which the exhibitions enabled research participants to become co-creators of the work through reflection and evaluation. And it will consider the degree to which events like exhibitions can democratise and share knowledge.