Feminist approaches to action research

We need to watch out which worldview shapes our research? In Participatory Action Research (PAR), we sit in circles, talk, and collect data in participatory way. Yet—at the moment of analysis—many of us succumb the conventional frame: 🔹 counting individual choices 🔹 measuring individual change 🔹 celebrating individual agency But Shanti’s story shows why this is only part-truth. She says she left college to “stand on her own feet”… while carrying her family’s debts, her brother’s school fees, her parents’ hopes — and the weight of caste, gender, and class. PAR is meant to break that frame. It is about Sindhanai — collective critical thought — where communities get space to study themselves, name the forces shaping their lives, and act together. If we analyse their words only as isolated “I”s, we erase the “we” that keeps them alive. This is not just a methodological flaw, it is also succumbing to ideological capture. Read: “Uncovering Perspectives — Analysis in Participatory Action Research” #ParticipatoryActionResearch #PAR #DecolonisingResearch #Relationality #Pluriverse #CollectiveAgency #CriticalThinking #WorkersVoices #FeministResearch #CommunityKnowledge #Sindhanai #StructuralJustice #BeyondIndividualism Haidee Bell Barbara Groot-Sluijsmans Antonia Musunga Deepak L Xavier Havovi Wadia Nick Grono Gillian Marcelle, PhD নবনিতা - Navanita Bhattacharya Uma Chatterjee Beenish Shayk Clémence Petit-Perrot Sarah Hyder Iqbal Arun Kumar Tarini Shipurkar Nafeesa Khan

💡 Forced migration extends far beyond the act of displacement, it reveals deeper crises rooted in gender inequality and power imbalances. Women and LGBTQ+ refugees face unique challenges like gender-based violence and exploitation, yet their needs are often sidelined in mainstream research. A feminist lens helps uncover these hidden injustices, showing how systemic inequality and intersecting factors like race and class shape the experiences of displaced individuals. Feminist research goes beyond highlighting problems; it creates pathways for inclusive, community-driven solutions. Centering the voices of those most affected is essential. Displaced women and marginalized groups must be active participants in shaping the policies and support systems that impact their lives. 📣 If you're looking to integrate feminist and intersectional approaches into your research, my Mini Guide: Research for Advocacy & Systemic Change* can help. It offers key insights on conducting research that leads to actionable, systemic change. Download it here: https://lnkd.in/dRmGWD_9 Let’s work together to ensure our research and advocacy are inclusive, impactful, and just. 💪🏽💪🏿💪🏼 #intersectionality #research #GenderEquality

New article ´Building on decolonial feminist scholarship, we show how a commitment to reflexive practice “in the field��� has developed further, through a reflection on the self as a researcher and on “the field” as a construct. This ethical and political commitment prompts a rethinking of key concepts in fieldwork (and research more generally), including those of “the researcher,” “the research participant” (or “population”), “expertise,” and what constitutes “data” and “knowledge.” We argue that a preferable approach to critical fieldwork is grounded in feminist and decolonial, anti-racist, anti-capitalist politics. This approach is committed not just to reflecting critically on “the field” and the interactions of the researcher within it but also to challenging the divisions, exclusions, and structures of oppression that sustain the separations between “here” and “there,” “researcher” and “researched,” and “knower" and “known.”´