Our Methodologies

Discover out methodologies and related projects below!

• Engaged scholarship

  Engaged scholarship refers to transformative and critical forms of academic work having the ambition and the capacity to stimulate reflection that enables more inclusive practices in society and academia. We have specifically explored, described and developed this methodology in one project that was at the cradle of the Co-Creation for Inclusive Knowledges Lab: the NWO project Engaged Scholarship Narratives of Change, led by prof. Halleh Ghorashi.   

  This project aimed at a more comprehensive and transformative understanding of how engaged scholarship can contribute to the societal inclusion of refugees. Its underlying assumption is that the social sciences have an important role in enlarging societal and academic imaginations by connecting local, historical, and analytical knowledge to enable an actual inclusion of disadvantaged groups.

  On the website of the Engaged Scholarship, Narratives of Change project you can find more information on engaged scholarship methodologies and related notions and literature on engaged scholarship. You can also see examples of the contribution of engaged scholarship in stimulating and stipulating the conditions and narratives of change, in particular towards inclusion of refugees in the light of competing societal and academic demands and structures.

• Arts-based methods

  Arts-informed or arts-based approaches involves the interconnection of artistic practices and social research in different ways, through which knowledge is co-created. As outlined by Fabian Holle, Maria Rast and Halleh Ghorashi in their research , this holds that participants become involved as creative knowledge co-producers, which potentially enables critical reflection and the unsettlement of existing power (im-)balances.

  Such an approach particularly values the situated knowledge based on lived experiences of participants, while simultaneously privileging self-determination, and the shifting of power toward participants who are taken seriously as partners in the process of both artistic creation, as well as knowledge production.

  The output of arts-based projects also carries a potential to be communicated to wider communities outside the walls academia. But more importantly, by allowing for more sensorial, visual, emotional or simply more creative ways of working, artistic practices are tools for imagining new worlds or new horizons beyond the limits posed by (everyday) language, hereby opening up new pathways for social change.

  Projects:

  Common Ground Dialogues: Timo Korstenbroek

  Limbo: Fabian Holle

  Youth Leadership and Resilience: Maeve Powlick

  Boundaries in art-based research and art projects about refugee experiences

• Participatory action research (PAR)

  Participatory Action Research (PAR) is an inclusive and collaborative approach to research that prioritizes the active involvement of community members throughout the research process. PAR aims to democratize knowledge production by integrating the insights, experiences, and expertise of those who are typically marginalized or excluded from conventional research paradigms. Cornish et al. (2023) describe four key principles of PAR:

  1. Authority of direct experience: PAR values the expertise generated through experience, claiming that those who have been marginalized or harmed by current social relations have deep experiential knowledge of those systems and deserve to own and lead initiatives to change them;
  2. Knowledge in action: Following the tradition of action research, it is through leaning from the experience of making changes that PAR generates new knowledge;
  3. Research as a transformative process: for PAR, the research process is as important as the outcomes; projects aim to create empowering relationships and environments within the research process itself;
  4. Collaboration and dialogue: PAR’s power comes from harnessing the diverse sets of expertise and capacities of its collaborators through critical dialogues.

   In the process of designing a PAR project it is important to take these core considerations into regard:

  • PAR cycles: PAR does not follow a highly proceduralized or linear set of steps. Instead, in a cyclical and relatively open-ended process, teams work together to come to an initial definition of their social problem, design a suitable action, observe and gather information on the result, and then analyse and reflect on the action and its impact, in order to learn, modify their understanding and inform the next iteration of the research-action cycle. The fundamental process of building relationships occurs throughout these cycles.
  • Building relationships: Relationships first, research second is a key principle for PAR project design. Individual PAR projects are often nested in long-term collaborations. Trustworthy relationships depend upon scholars being aware, open and honest about their own interests and perspectives.

  Find out more about the PAR here

• Community-led research and action (CLRA)

  Community-led Research and Action (CLRA) is a transformative research method. In this approach, individuals who can provide in-depth insights through their own lived experiences conduct action research themselves. The aim is to address a specific problem that directly affects them. 'Community' refers to a group of people who share a common experience, which becomes the subject of the research. In previous project affiliated with the lab, the community researchers identified as sex workers and transgender youth. This method is based on the belief that people with lived experiences best understand their own needs and challenges and should therefore be actively involved in designing and conducting research as well as the subsequent actions. The CLRA method also encourages broader participation of these people as they themselves are the researchers, formulating their own goals, collecting data, conducting analyses, drawing conclusions, and making recommendations for relevant stakeholders, all under the guidance of trained researchers. CLRA builds on other collaborative research forms such as photovoice, arts-based approaches and participatory action research (PAR) but stands out in its unique characteristic. Unlike many PAR initiatives where the research subject is predetermined either by the grant call or the researcher, CLRA allows for equal involvement of each actor from the outset.

  Projects:

  Imarisha Hustle: Designing Economic Pathways for Financially Vulnerable Queer Men in Nairobi, Kenya

  Community-Led Research and Action (CLRA) and Transzorg in Den Haag