Presentation short abstract

This presentation proposes a discussion of how research based on decolonial and feminist theories and praxis is a space from which restorative justice is generated for communities impacted by epistemic and other forms of violence.

Presentation long abstract

This presentation proposes a discussion of how research based on decolonial and feminist theories and methodologies is a space from which restorative justice is generated for communities impacted by epistemic and other forms of violence. To do that, it will explore the participatory and creative methodologies applied with community organisations during two transdisciplinary research projects in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala and St. Vincent, in the Caribbean, that co- produced knowledge with Indigenous rural communities impacted by disasters.

The presentation will argue that recounting and narrating these events and places through different forms of creative expressions and knowledge co-production becomes a dual process of transformation and restorative justice. In other words, vulnerability and injustice (caused by colonialism, epistemic oppression and the disaster) is transformed into resistance by collectively envisioning possible futures during the research process. Specifically, I propose to discuss how storytelling and remembering through drawing, photography, or embroidery, among other creative expressions and research methodologies, can serve as a space for reconfiguring people’s relationships to their bodies, territories, knowledges and memory.

Based on de-colonial (Escobar 2015; Rodriguez 2022) feminist (Colectivo Miradas Críticas 2017; Segato 2015; Tsing 2015) and creative research approaches (Armijos and Ramirez 2025), this presentation will aim at opening a discussion on how decolonial and participatory research recognises and enables embodied, everyday experiences of resistance and relational ontologies conducive to restorative justice. I will also reflect on what this type of research entails for researchers.