We frequently hear requests for simple, short guidelines or principles that can be used by practitioners of participatory approaches to research, learning and action. In this context, we put a call out for ‘your input!’ to create a crowdsourced curated reading list on ‘protocols and guidelines for participatory, engaged-, decolonial, indigenous, feminist and other related traditions of research’.
While we will make reference to more conceptual and longer pieces on these topics (and the importance of not only focusing on technical ‘protocols’), we are focusing on compiling accessible, short and pragmatic resources.
Do you have anything to add? Ideas? Comments? Links? Write to: colin.anderson@uvm.edu
List curated by Colin Anderson with input from Csilla Kiss, Maywa Montenegro de Wit, Michelle Nikfarjam, Jasber Singh, Tabitha Martens, Stephane McLachlan, Chiara Tornaghi and Lamis Jamil
The Curated List
- Participatory action research: towards a more fruitful knowledge (Check out Box 3 on p. 45 for some great questions to ask/guide your work, amongst other gems in this great resource)
- A guide to ethical principles and practice on Community-based participatory research
- Participatory Action Research Toolkit: An Introduction to Using PAR as an Approach to Learning, Research and Action
- The Code of Ethics of the International Society of Ethnobiology (ISE) reflects the vision of the Society and provides a framework for decision-making and conduct for ethnobiological research and related activities. The goals are to facilitate ethical conduct and equitable relationships, and foster a commitment to meaningful collaboration and reciprocal responsibility by all parties.
- Ensuring Community Comes First: Actions for Community-Campus Engagement Practitioners
- Operating principles for collective scholar-activism
- Canadian Tri-Council on Guidelines for Research w/ First Nations People
- Decolonising Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples
In particular, there is a list of questions author Linda Tuhiwai Smith recommends that researchers and communities engaged in research ask and try to answer before engaging in joint research activities:
- Who defined the research problem?
- For whom is this study worthy and relevant? Who says so?
- What knowledge will the community gain from this study?
- What knowledge will the researcher(s) gain from this study?
- What are some likely positive outcomes from this study?
- What are some possible negative outcomes?
- How can the negative outcome be eliminated?
- To whom is the researcher accountable?
- What processes are in place to support the research, the researched and the researcher?
- The Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR) is a feminist, anti-colonial lab specializing in monitoring plastic pollution and have iteratively created a lab book to guide their own praxis:
“Our Lab Book is a living manual of our values, guidelines, and protocols. Part manifesto and part ‘how to’ guide, it outlines how the lab works socially and scientifically. The Lab Book is always being updated and changing, and lives in a shared collaborative format so that lab members can make comments and update material.”
- This Ally Bill of Responsibilities provides a simple guideline for allies of indigenous struggles and useful for thinking for how this applies in a research context
Other related resources suggested as a part of the crowdsourcing process
- Connected Communities Series of Guides on Participatory Research
- Reading List: 8 Books on Indigenous Research Methods recommended by Helen Kara
- Participatory Action Research: Engaging marginalised communities in policy and practice
- Goemans, M., Levkoe C.Z., Changfoot, N., and Andrée, P. (2018). Learning to “Walk the Talk”: Reflexive Evaluation in Community-First Engaged Research. Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning, 4(2), 61-84.
- Kepkiewicz, L., Levkoe C.Z., and Brynne, A. (2018). Community First for Whom? Reflections on Positionality and the Possibilities and Challenges of Community-Campus Engagement from the Food Sovereignty Hub. Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning, 4(2), 43-60.
- A wonderful curated set of resources on action-activist research.
- KIMURA, Aya H.; KINCHY, Abby. Citizen Science: Probing the Virtues and Contexts of Participatory Research. Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, [S.l.], v. 2, p. 331-361, dec. 2016. ISSN 2413-8053.
- Vol 6 No 3 (2007): Special Issue: Participatory Ethics / Special Issue – Participatory Ethics (Guest Edited by Caitlin Cahill, Farhana Sultana, and Rachel Pain)
- C. R. Hale, ed. (2008), Engaging contradictions: theory, politics and methods of activist scholarship. Berkeley: University of California Press
- Harcourt and Nelson eds. (2015), Practising Feminist Political Ecologies: Moving Beyond the ‘Green Economy, Zed books
- Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World (Critical South)