Monday 21 October 2019

Whose knowledge counts? Exploring research collaboration with social movements


Open seminar
Maynooth, Tuesday November 19th with Dr Alberto Arribas Lozano

 


Drawing on ethnographic research undertaken with social movement networks in Spain, South Africa, and Peru, this seminar will explore the possibilities, tensions and limits of research collaboration.
Social movements often operate as reflexive communities that conduct research, broadly conceived, as a key dimension of their political praxis. As scholars, what does it imply to do research with non-academic actors/subjects who are expert knowledge producers themselves?
Can our projects be designed/transformed into a collaborative encounter, a dialogue of reflexivities for the co-production of knowledge? Can research be articulated around the questions posed by movement organizations instead of (solely) around disciplinary interests?
What ethical, epistemic and methodological challenges and innovations arise in this engagement?
Collaborative frameworks, the shift from studying social movements to working and thinking together with activists as co-researchers, centrally address the politics of knowledge production, raising critical questions about what the purpose of research is, who is it relevant for, how it is conducted, what knowledges we take seriously – whose knowledge counts – and who we write for and how.
Dr Alberto Arribas Lozano is working in Peru with PRATEC, a grassroots organization devoted to Andean-Amazonian cultural affirmation and decolonial community-based research. He has previously done collaborative research with social rights activists in Spain, and worked on the interface between research and social justice in South Africa.

Auxilia building seminar room, Maynooth University (north campus) 
Tuesday November 19th, 6 – 7.30 pm
Admission free, all welcome.


Dr Alberto Arribas Lozano
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions - Irish Research Council CAROLINE Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Sociology, Maynooth University