In this episode, we speak with Global South Caribbean Feminists Peggy Antrobus, Norma Shorey, and Chris Ashton, and also discuss the contributions of their late colleague Pat Ellis. This episode showcases their commitments to feminist and participatory values and processes especially in reference to their work with the Women and Development Unit (WAND), University of the West Indies and its Rose Hall Participatory Research Project. They discuss their critique of Caribbean governments’ structural adjustment policies.

Peggy Antrobus is a recipient of the 1990 CARICOM Triennial Award. From 1974-77, she was the Director of the Women’s Bureau, Office of the Prime Minister, Jamaica. She set up the Women and Development Unit (WAND) at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill (1978-1995). She is a founding member of the Caribbean Association of Feminist Action and Research (CAFRA) and Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN). 

Norma Shorey was a program officer at WAND. She later joined the Canadian International Development Agency Office to be a development officer for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean. She founded Catalyst Consultants, which focuses on change facilitation, leadership, and organizational development. 

Chris Ashton was a young adult when WAND launched the Integrated Rural Development Project in Rose Hall, St. Vincent. Chris became a member of the Rose Hall Community working group. Chris has also worked as an independent consultant in the field of social policy and programs. 

The conversation starts with Peggy sharing her vision for the WAND unit and its orientation (3:20). We trace WAND’s trajectory and evolution, including the influences of feminisms and participatory values on its first participatory action research, community project in Rose Hall St. Vincent. Along with some other key works of our featured feminists, the topics of  discussions are:  WAND’s Rose Hall Participatory Evaluation and Research project for the integration of women in rural development (8:38), Chris’ involvement in the Rose Hall project (10:47), Rose Hall’s community collaboration and cooperation ethos (13:49), the impact and consequences of the Women and Men in Development workshop (19:00), the evolution of WAND and the challenges of that evolution  (33:50), WAND’s critique of Caribbean governments structural adjustment policies on women (41:33),  Peggy, Norma, and Chris’s growth and development as feminists (42:32) and how and why feminist -informed participatory action research and participatory processes still matter (48:23).

Learn more about our guests and their work at our companion site https://www.parfemtrailblazers.net/  This episode is hosted by Patricia Maguire and produced by Vanessa Gold and Shikha Diwakar. Music is by ZakharValaha from Pixabay.

In this episode, we host Dr. Sujata Khandekar and Mumtaz Shaikh from the Committee of Resource Organizations for Literacy, now known as CORO India. CORO facilitates change through a community-based approach​​ within India's most marginalised and oppressed communities. Dr. Sujata Khandekar is one of the co-founders of CORO. She earned a Masters of Arts in Gender, Education and International Development from the University of London, and she engaged eight co-researchers in a Feminist Cooperative Inquiry Project that was part of her PhD work. She was a fellow in the MacArthur Foundation, India Leadership Development Program. 

Mumtaz Shaikh, one of seven Indians named on the British Broadcasting Corporation's 2015 list of the 100 most influential women, first started as community volunteer at CORO  in the Integrated Development Program. She has worked on gender-based violence for 20 years and was elected secretary of the Mahila Mandal Federation, a 10,000 women strong organization. She now manages CORO's grassroots movement sector. 

The conversation and knowledge produced through the production of this podcast aims to respect the diverse lived realities and languages relevant to its subject content and context. Mumtaz contributed to this episode in Hindi. One of our production managers, Shikha Diwakar, interpreted, translated, and overdubbed Mumtaz’s responses into English for our listeners. Shikha is a PhD candidate at McGill University, Canada. Her research focuses on Dalit women's identities and lived experiences in higher education. 

In today’s episode, the conversation opens with an overview of CORO’s journey (3:30) and vision to building community-led programs (9:40). Topics of discussion include Sujata and Mumtaz’s journey in CORO (7:36), Mumtaz’s journey through the Grassroots Leadership Development Program (16:43), Sujata’s PhD research (Feminist Cooperative Inquiry Project) (24:07) and Mumtaz’s experience as a co-researcher in this research (34:31), the State Level Women’s Conference led by Mumtaz and other members (40:54), CORO’s school-based gender sensitization program (54:10), and Sujata and Mumtaz’s understanding of feminisms (1:02:00). 

Learn more about our guests and their work at our companion site https://www.parfemtrailblazers.net/  This episode is hosted by Patricia Maguire and produced by Vanessa Gold and Shikha Diwakar. Music is by ZakharValaha from Pixabay.

In this episode, we host action researcher Dr. Davydd Greenwood. During his 40-year history of action research in Spain, Norway, and New York, he explored issues as diverse as rural exodus, ethnic conflict, industrial cooperatives, participatory community development, and the role of governmental institutions in shaping and exacerbating identity politics and conflicts. He also examined the links between action research and feminisms, specifically how feminism opened new spaces for AR in universities. Dr. Greenwood is the Goldwin Smith Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Anthropology at Cornell University, where he taught for 44 years. At Cornell, he had many positions, including Director of the Einaudi Center for International Studies and Director of the Institute for European Studies. He co-founded the Cornell Participatory Action Research Network (CPARN) which is the main focus of this episode. 

The conversation opens up discussing Dr. Greenwood’s early work with Mondragon Cooperatives and the Spanish Basque community and how this shaped him as an action researcher (2:22). Topics of discussion include his early learnings from doing action research and how those insights informed his career in AR (7:40); how feminism is linked to PAR (10:58);  masculinity and critical reflexivity (16:34); the journey of CPARN and AR in democratizing research and universities (20:35); feminism and PAR (23:44); how FEM PAR influenced CPARN (26:10); how CPARN dissolved (27:10); and the upcoming third edition of the Introduction to Action Research (29:33). The conversation wraps up discussing listening and dialoguing in research (41:48).

Learn more about our guests and their work at our companion site https://www.parfemtrailblazers.net/  This episode is hosted by Patricia Maguire and produced by Vanessa Gold and Shikha Diwakar. Music is by ZakharValaha from Pixabay.

In this episode, we host activist, action researcher Marie Brennan. Dr. Brennan has been an important and persistent proponent of critical educational and teacher action research in the Australian action research movement. Now retired, Dr. Brennan is Extraordinary Professor, Stellenbosch University in South Africa, Professor of Education at the University of South Australia and Victoria University. She has taught and researched in five Australian universities. She and Susan Noffke were longtime action research collaborators and writing partners. Prior to 1990s, she also worked in the Victorian Education Department in a variety of roles, including in technical schools as a humanities teacher, member of the Access Skills Project Team in Curriculum and Research Branch, co-coordinating the statewide School Improvement Plan, and policy analyst in the ministry-wide Policy Coordination Division.

She has a long record promoting collaborative, school and community-based action research that examines the interconnections of gender, race, class, culture, coloniality, globalization, and corporatization with schooling, teacher education, and higher education. Today’s episode opens with her journey into Action Research (2:44). Here, topics of discussion include: successes and struggles of getting action research into the mainstream Australian schools (7:48), long term collaboration with Susan Noffke (17:00), reconceptualizing teacher reflection as a political, group act (21:55), Australian action research movement and feminist perspectives (27:56), working with Aboriginal staff, faculty, and students on AR at Central Queensland University (34:10), and the Student Voice and Agency Partnership Project (39:38). The conversation wraps up with encouraging remarks for emerging action researchers (48:36).

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.

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.