Participatory Action Research - Feminist Trailblazers & Good Troublemakers

This is our first episode paying tribute to a feminist trailblazer who is no longer with us. Dr. Martha Farrell was Director of the International Academy of Lifelong Learning of the Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA). She is known for working to end gender violence and gender harassment in the Indian workplace. In 2015, Martha Farrell was killed alongside 13 others in a Taliban attack on a guest house in Kabul, Afghanistan, while working there providing gender equity training for the Aga Khan Trust. In this episode, we honor Martha Farrell’s legacy of bringing gender justice and feminisms to PRIA and Indian civil society organizations. In the first half of this episode, we speak with Nandita Bhatt - the first and current director of the Martha Farrell Foundation. In the second half (32:05), we talk with Rajesh Tandon, the founder and president of PRIA. They discuss Martha’s conviction that men and boys had to change to end gender violence and gender discrimination. They examine the long term impact of her innovating organizational Gender Audits. Nandita Bhatt is a well-known Indian civil society practitioner and feminist. For over 25 years, Nandita has worked in the space of gender inclusion and prevention of sexual harassment and sexual violence against women. She is the director of the Martha Farrell Foundation. Rajesh Tandon founded the Society for Participatory Research in Asia in 1987. Dr. Tandon is internationally acclaimed for participatory research with marginalized communities and building democratic capacity in civil society. He is the UNESCO Co-Chair on Community Based Research & Social Responsibility in Higher Education Learn more about our guests and their work at our companion site www.parfemtrailblazers.net.  This episode is brought to you by host Patricia Maguire and is produced by Vanessa Gold and Shikha Diwakar. Music is by ZakharValaha from Pixabay.

In this episode, we talk to three special guests: Michelle Fine, Cheryl Wilkins and María Elena Torre, all extensively involved in groundbreaking work combining participatory action research with social, gender, and racial justice work.  Michelle Fine is distinguished professor at the City University of New York. She's professor of critical psychology, women's studies, American studies, and Urban Education at the Graduate Center. Cheryl Wilkins is co-founder and co-director at Columbia University's Center for Justice. Cheryl is an adjunct faculty at Columbia University School of Social Work, and the Center for Justice bringing issues of mass incarceration into Columbia University's Ivy League world. María Elena Torre is director and co-founder of the Public Science Project. She's also a faculty member in critical social psychology and urban education at the City University of New York Graduate Center. We dig in to their collaborative and long-term work using participatory action research behind and beyond prison bars, starting with the work of the Prison Research Collective at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, the building block for other PAR projects. We revisit some of their participatory and action research projects which are deeply informed by intersectional feminisms. While talking about their projects, they discuss the challenges around developing trust (7:21), how these projects are connected (21:53), the role of quantitative data in PAR (32:18), and what makes their work feminist (36:29). As we bring our conversation to an end, they share how they have been troublemakers in the world of research (54:34).  Tune in to find out more! Learn more about our guests and their work at our companion site www.parfemtrailblazers.net.  This episode is brought to you by host Patricia Maguire and is produced by Vanessa Gold and Shikha Diwakar. Music is by ZakharValaha from Pixabay. Citation: Maguire, P. (Host), Gold, V., & Diwakar, S (Producers). (2023, Jan 31). Michelle Fine, Cheryl Wilkins, & María Elena Torre – PAR Behind Prison Bars. (No. 7). In Participatory Action Research - Feminist Trailblazers & Good Troublemakers [Audio podcast]. Self-produced. 

In this episode, our guest is activist teacher educator Alice McIntyre, known for her use of Photovoice in PAR.  She discusses the challenges of her first PAR project with white classroom teachers to make meaning of their white racial identity in a racist educational system. She talks about the power of photovoice in two long-term PAR projects, one with urban adolescents of colour to identify and act on problems they identified in their community; another with working class women in Belfast in the North of Ireland to make sense of their experience of three decades of sectarian violence. Alice explores the impact of her working-class identity on her social justice stance in higher education, and critiques how she fought battles, saying she “did go to every fight [she] was invited to.” She wraps up with advice for what potential participatory researchers should look for in a graduate program and briefly discusses how her feminism played out in projects. Alice McIntyre teaches in the Boston College Lynch School of Education, as well as teaches and chairs dissertations at Northeastern University's College of Professional Studies doctoral program. She began her career as a classroom substitute teacher in 1980 and by 2020 was Professor Emeritus at Hellenic College in Massachusetts. She authored major PAR books, including, Making meaning of whiteness: Exploring racial identity with white teachers; Inner-City Kids: Adolescents confront life and violence in an urban community; and Women in Belfast: How violence shapes identity. With host Patricia Maguire and Mary Brydon-Miller, Alice edited the anthology Traveling Companions: Feminism, Teaching, and Action Research, in which feminist scholar-practitioners examine their work to bridge the gap between feminist and participatory action research. See more about the Alice McIntyre and her work at our companion site www.parfemtrailblazers.net  This episode is brought to you by host Patricia Maguire and is produced by Vanessa Gold. Music is by ZakharValaha from Pixabay.

Our guest today is Dr. Andrea Cornwall. Dr. Cornwall is a political anthropologist who specializes in the anthropology of democracy in participatory research, gender justice and sexuality, and citizen participation. Her work focuses on what needs to change to give those affected by decisions, a voice in those very decisions, particularly focusing on the rights of women and sexual minorities. She calls for "troubling masculinities" in PAR,  expecting powerful men to examine how their doing of masculinity impacts and informs their PAR. Dr. Cornwall has written and worked extensively on the issues of participatory approaches to transform relationships of knowledge and power, and this is from and in participatory development, participatory rural appraisal, participatory action research. You can find a more comprehensive bio and a partial publications list on our companion website, parfemtrailblazers.net as well as a link to a magnificent Wikipedia entry about Andrea. In this episode, Pat and Andrea discuss Andrea’s work, struggles, successes, bringing participatory values and ways of being to PAR, and we hope that these conversations really help all of us re-vision a participatory and action research that's deeply informed by intersectional feminisms. This episode is brought to you by host Patricia Maguire and is produced by Vanessa Gold. Music is by ZakharValaha from Pixabay.

In this episode, Brinton Lykes and Brisna Caxaj discuss a long-term feminist participatory action research project supporting Mayan women’s agency in their search for redress for harm suffered during the genocidal violence perpetrated by the Guatemalan state at the height of the thirty-six-year armed conflict. They explain the use of Mayan cosmovision, creative arts, dramatic arts, and embodied practices as strategies to both produce and analyze knowledge as the Mayan women developed their own vision of reparations and redress. Brisna Caxaj is a Guatemalan feminist sociologist. She is the Gender Program Director at Impunity Watch Guatemala and the President of the Board of Directors of the Unión Nacional de Mujeres Guatemaltecas (National Union of Guatemalan Women). She coordinated the team for this PAR project. Brinton Lykes is professor of Community-Cultural Psychology and Co-director of the Center for Human Rights and International Justice of Boston College. Brinton has decades of anti-racist, feminist activist scholarship that incorporates creative arts and the epistemologies of Original Peoples with women and children who are trying to re-thread their lives in the wake of racialized and gendered violence and in post genocide transitional justice processes.  She is the co-founder of the Boston Women's Fund and the Ignacio Martín-Baró Fund for mental health and human rights. See more about the guests and this project at our companion site www.parfemtrailblazers.net This episode is brought to you by host Patricia Maguire  and is produced by Vanessa Gold. Music is by ZakharValaha from Pixabay

In this episode Deborah Barndt and Margarita Antonio discuss their collaboration on a participatory arts-based research project called VIVA! in Nicaragua the early days of URACCAN - the University of the Autonomous Region of Nicaragua Caribbean Coast. They talk about how through that project and their collaborative relationship they brought together feminisms, participatory art-based research and indigenous cosmologies. Margarita is a Miskitu woman from the Nicaragua Caribbean Coast. An Indigenous and feminist activist, she works with international Indigenous women promoting both their collective and individual rights, and their voice in decision-making forums. Margarita has a long career in media and journalism including community TV and in cultural revitalization. On Deborah Barndt’s website www.deborahbarndt.com, she describes herself as la politica, la poeta, la pensadora - the activist, the artist and the academic. She is Professor of Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto. In the 1970s Deb was one of the early coordinators of the Toronto Participatory Research Group which was one of the five original PAR networks, or nodes, that was sponsored in the 1970s by the International Council of Adult Education. The sponsorship of these five nodes really facilitated participatory researchers’ collaboration across and within the Global South and North. 

Marjorie Mbilinyi talks with co-hosts Patricia Maguire and Jessica Oddy. Marjorie is one of the earliest feminist participatory action researchers. Since the early 1970’s Marjorie has fought for gender and class justice with transformative feminists in Tanzania and across the African continent. In this episode Marjorie discusses the gender discrimination she faced at University of Dar es Salem, the early PAR projects with rural women farmers, and the genesis of a transformative feminist coalition that created alternative feminist spaces in the university, the emerging participatory research approach arena, and the development sphere. She has been a tireless advocate for gender and class justice. This episode is brought to you by co-hosts Patricia Maguire and Jessica Oddy and is produced by Vanessa Gold. Music is by ZakharValaha from Pixabay Podcast Transcript and resource materials available at our companion site https://www.parfemtrailblazers.net/ If you have comments or comments about this podcast, we'd love to hear from you! maguirep@wnmu.edu  

Renu Khanna talks with co-hosts Patricia Maguire and Jessica Oddy. Renu is a trailblazer in participatory action researcher, particularly in women’s health and human rights.  In the early 80s, she began using PAR as part of her broader work with the Social Action for Rural and Tribal Inhabitants of India or SARTHI. Its overall purpose was to give women a meaningful voice in their own health care.                                                                                                                                                                                                 Renu is one of the co-founders of the Society for Health Alternatives in Badadora India. SAHAJ created feminist-inspired maternal health programs.  She's worked mobilizing traditionally marginalized groups in the tribal areas of Gujarat, the urban poor, and subsequently on health issues of sexual minorities, people living with disabilities, and adolescents. She has over 40 years of experience as a trainer, an action researcher, and evaluator, and a policy analyst in India.  In this podcast, Pat, Jess, and Renu talk about Renu’s journey thru participatory training, participatory research and evaluation, and work with a feminist coalition developing innovative gender transformative research and evaluation. This episode is brought to you by co-hosts Patricia Maguire and Jessica Oddy and is produced by Vanessa Gold. Music is by ZakharValaha from Pixabay Podcast Transcript and resource materials available at our companion site https://www.parfemtrailblazers.net/ If you have comments or comments about this podcast, we'd love to hear from you! maguirep@wnmu.edu