Tag Archives: practice as research

2.8. Ethics in practice – a panel discussion

Image of the logo for the Practice As Research PAR network Seminar on the 26th April 2023

Ethics in practice – a panel discussion

As Practice As Research takes many forms, the practicalities of engaging in research ethically also vary greatly. In this online seminar, the panelists draw on their personal research practices to discuss how to engage with research ethically. Dr Jo Collins focuses on the context of research in counselling and coaching practice, Dr Alison Finch explores participatory, egalitarian research with young adults, and Áine McAllister highlights ethics in the context of Poetic Inquiry with refugees.

Dr Jo Collins is a practicing coach and Senior Lecturer in counselling, coaching and mentoring at the Christ Church Canterbury University.

Dr Alison Finch is a registered nurse and nurse-research-practitioner. She is a cancer nurse, assistant chief nurse at UCLH and a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Academy member.

Áine McAllister is a Lecturer at UCL working in the context of Languages in Education and in Refugee Education. Find Áine on LinkedIn.

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Video hosted on the PAR YouTube channel.
Audio hosted on the PAR Buzzsprout channel and can be listened to on Spotify, Apple podcasts or on other RSS podcast apps.

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2.7. The intricate ethics of participatory research: issues and challenges

A photo of Prof Banks with her hand on her chin

Source: SBanks

Seminar on the 1st March 2023

The intricate ethics of participatory research: issues and challenges

In this online seminar Professor Sarah Banks reflects on ethical challenges arising in participatory research.

Participatory research is becoming increasingly popular amongst academics, community organisations and research funders. This is research that involves people with direct experience of the issue being studied (e.g. homelessness, domestic violence, asylum seeking) in designing and carrying out the research, often in partnership with academics or other professionals, with the aim of influencing change in policy or practice. This type of research raises distinctive ethical challenges, particularly relating to power dynamics, partnership-working and social activism, and may not always be fully understood by institutional research ethics committees. This presentation will outline some of the main ethical challenges arising in participatory research, arguing for the importance of ‘everyday ethics’ focusing on human relationships and reflexivity as a counter-balance to the ‘regulatory ethics’ of institutional review processes, which emphasise rule-following and impartiality. It will also introduce the revised guidelines for community-based participatory research recently published by the Centre for Social Justice and Community Action, Durham University and the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement, www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/social-justice-community-action/research-areas/ethics-consultation/

Click to download Prof Banks’ slides in PDF.

Sarah Banks is Professor in the Department of Sociology and co-founder of the Centre for Social Justice and Community Action at Durham University, UK. The Centre promotes participatory action research for social justice in partnership with community-based organisations. With the Centre and members of the International Collaboration for Participatory Health Research (ICPHR), she has developed ethical guidelines for participatory research and offers training/events for academic and community-based researchers. She has coordinated several participatory research projects, including research on debt, poverty and community development, and leads the Ethics Working Group of the ICPHR. She is co-editor of Ethics in Participatory Research for Health and Social Well-Being (Routledge, 2019) and Co-Producing Research: A Community Development Approach (Policy Press, 2019), and co-author of Participatory Research for Health and Social Well-Being (Springer, 2019).

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Video hosted on the PAR YouTube channel.
Audio hosted on the PAR Buzzsprout channel and can be listened to on Spotify, Apple podcasts or on other RSS podcast apps.

2.6. Hooks and pain: Ethical concerns in practice-based research on body suspensions

Source: FManfredi

Seminar on the 1st February 2023

Hooks and pain: Ethical concerns in practice-based research on body suspensions.

In this online seminar Federica Manfredi reflects on various ethical dilemmas relating to practice-based research on body suspensions.

Body suspensions are a challenging fieldwork of investigation because, according to research partners, “words are not enough” to express such intense experiences.

A body suspension consists in the elevation of a protagonists inserting hooks in the skin as temporary piercings; hooks are connected to an above scaffolding with ropes and pulling the main one, the suspendee leaves the floor for a variable amount of time. Body suspensions are realized in contemporary Europe during festivals and private events by a trans-spatial community of practitioners, that often privilege privacy and online invisibility to prevent stigmatization. Suspension experiences are delegitimized by non-suspendees because of the voluntary pain: it is elected as evidence of mental deviancy, even by a pathologizing bibliography, delegitimating the voices of practitioners.

The anthropological research “Learning to Fly” investigated meanings associated to suspensions by regular practitioners through a tailor-designed experimental methodology to overpass logo-centric logics. In a creative laboratory, participants co-created symbolic objects with metaphorical meanings to express one or more aspects of their hook-experiences. Handcrafts became referents of oral narrative during interviews, being able to express more than what the suspendee (or the ethnographer) pre-established to investigate, and exploring more than what words were allowed to share before. Ethical concerns emerged in several moments of the ethnography, especially concerning the desire to circulate the handcrafts to support the spread of a restored image of body suspension. Illustrating exhibition contexts and the consequences of the handcraft circulation, this presentation aims to discuss the militant use of the ethnography, the limits of the outsider positioning of the ethnographer, and the use of research’s results by epistemic partners.

After a Master Degree in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Turin (2009), Federica Manfredi started her militant approach to anthropology in Switzerland working for the visibility of local farmers, the defense of women and children rights, and the prevention of suicides. Upon return to Italy she received a post-master degree in Migration and Psychopathology developing a research on meanings associated to the “good death” among migrants. In 2014 she published her first monograph “I volti celati di Civitavecchia” about the trance experienced by penitents during Holy Friday and, between two kids, she was awarded a grant for her doctoral project on body suspensions in contemporary Europe. During the PhD in Medical Anthropology at the University of Lisbon (2022), she explored experimental methodologies of qualitative investigation, in balance between online and offline interactions, developing the theoretical proposal of the trans-spatiality. As member of the scientific project Excel – The Pursuit of Excellence, Federica investigated body modifications and body hacking, and she worked on the dissemination activities of the project with the workshop series The Hacked Barbie. Part of the organizing committee of the art exposition “Being F**king Perfect – The Pursuit of Excellence” (Lisbon 2022), she engaged for the promotion of the scientific labour in an accessible format for the non-academic public, cooperating with visual facilitators and artists. Federica is currently scientific consultant for private medical companies in Italy and Denmark as behavioral specialist, and she is working on new projects about the anthropology of pain.

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Video hosted on the PAR YouTube channel.
Audio hosted on the PAR Buzzsprout channel and can be listened to on Spotify, Apple podcasts or on other RSS podcast apps.

2.5. Still Moving – Ethical considerations in embodied practice

Source: SYork-Pryce

Seminar on the 11th January 2023:

Still Moving – Ethical considerations in embodied practice.

In this online seminar Dr Sonia York-Pryce reflects on ethical considerations within embodied practice and dance research.

To reflect on ethical considerations in her work, Sonia will begin with outlining the context of her work and what inspired her research. She will then explore the taboo of ageing and aesthetics and highlight the difference of the older dancer’s body. She will draw on her expertise in ageism and embodiment to talk about Practice As Research, which for her meant the creation of dance films with national and international senior professional dancers, but also with herself as a dancer.

Sonia York-Pryce, Dr Visual Arts, (Griffith University, Australia), Ba. Digital Media, (Honours; (Griffith University), Ba. Visual Arts (Southern Cross University, Australia), dancer, photographer, videographer, and interdisciplinary artist. From the 1960s to the present-day Sonia has trained and danced extensively in ballet and contemporary dance, initially in the UK then settling in Australia in 1994. She studied classical ballet at Elmhurst Ballet School, the Royal Ballet School, the London School of Contemporary Dance, and the Laban Centre, in London, UK. Sonia’s doctoral research, “Ageism and the Mature Dancer” examined how senior professional dancers, aged over 40, still performing, navigate the dance-by-date perpetuated within Western dance and consumer culture’s obsession with youth. Across a survey conducted through interviews and by email to over 35 participants, based nationally and internationally, York-Pryce discovered what drives these dancers to continue, and how they maintain their bodies.

Click here to access a PDF with more information about Sonia’s work and career.

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Video hosted on the PAR YouTube channel.
Audio hosted on the PAR Buzzsprout channel and can be listened to on Spotify, Apple podcasts or on other RSS podcast apps.

2.4. Ethical dilemmas in 20 century British music education history research

Source: Dr Ross Purves

Seminar on the 16th November 2022:

Ethical dilemmas in 20 century British music education history research.

In this online seminar Dr Ross Purves reflects on various ethical dilemmas relating to research projects into aspects of twentieth-century British music education history.

Dr Ross Purves will explore the benefits and creative possibilities of technology-mediated research practice in this area, but also some of the potential blunders and ethical dilemmas. Technology has enriched both research projects, enabling rich sensory engagement and fresh analytical insight. Yet the ease, immediacy and sheer power of contemporary technology may also entice the researcher towards rash, inaccurate or in some cases ethically-complex actions. For instance, the vast resources of the British Newspaper Archive have been used to trace the lives and careers of those within projects’ scope, but careful manual cross-referencing has still been necessary to avoid misconnecting reports of multiple individuals whose details matched the search terms. Without such checks there could be serious implications for an individual’s reputation and legacy, not to mention the quality of the research. Moreover, there are some who argue that such individuals – even though possibly deceased for some time – have a ‘right to be forgotten’. Yet by triangulating rich online resources with those held in offline archives and paper documents, Ross potentially casts ‘‘a shaft of brilliant light’ over what had been ‘in historical darkness’ (Crossen-White, 2015). What are the implications of these kinds of activities for living descendants and their own ‘life narratives’? In another example, how should the researcher make appropriate use of resources such as Ancestry.com, which combine access to digitized official archives with amateur genealogical projects created and shared within families. Since both research projects explore the twentieth-century, some individuals who are referenced might still be alive, invoking data protection regulation. Their immediate descendants will certainly be alive, and might inadvertently come to learn of project outputs published online. How should the researcher react if contact is made, or should the researcher set out to proactively make contact? These are historical projects, then, but not that historical – and technology can serve to warp this relatively small passage of time still further, bringing forgotten events to the fore and linking past lives to the present in potentially unexpected ways.

Dr Ross Purves is Associate Professor for Music Education at the UCL Institute of Education and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He was previously Senior Lecturer in Education at De Montfort University, Leicester, where he led modules in music and arts education, computing and educational technology. Ross has presented research at various UK and European education and music conferences and is an experienced performing musician and arranger. Between 2016 and 2018 he was a member of the Musicians’ Union Teachers’ Section National Committee. He currently serves on the Music Education Committee of the London Music Fund and is a school governor of Bedford Road Primary School. Ross received De Montfort University Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award in both 2017 and 2018. Ross’s research interests include: various aspects of music education and instrumental learning; the application of GIS and geospatial analysis to education research; children’s computer programming; the educational and creative applications of Lego and making; the history of education; teachers’ initial education, early career transition and professional development.

Subscribe to the recordings:
Video hosted on the PAR YouTube channel.
Audio hosted on the PAR Buzzsprout channel and can be listened to on Spotify, Apple podcasts or on other RSS podcast apps.

2.3. Ethics-Research-Practice: Two is company, three is a crowd

Source: Dr Tragou

Seminar on the 2nd November 2022:

Ethics-Research-Practice: Two is company, three is a crowd.

In this online seminar Dr Elena Tragou, a systemic psychologist-psychotherapist the relationship between ethics, research and practice.

How can we understand the three from a systemic point of view? How does “Aesthetics” clarify (if it does) the intertwining relationship of the three? A tour de force has been unfolding during the last four decades where professionals of mental health, researchers and educators have been opening up the dialogue on ethics, practice and research from an epistemic and ontological point of view. It seems that unless we contextualize the meaning of these ideas in a systemic epistemology we, as professionals, will be losing the great significance of their connections by focusing on the divided, Cartesian way of understanding them. May the tour go on…

Click to download the presentation slides.

Dr Elena Tragou is a systemic psychologist-psychotherapist, researcher, educator and a writer. She has published two books on clinical assessment, numerous research articles and has been participating in European and International conferences presenting her work on systemic research and therapy, human communication, and supervision and therapy. She is a clinical member of APA and AAMFT, Registered MHT, and a member of ELESYTH.

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Video hosted on the PAR YouTube channel.
Audio hosted on the PAR Buzzsprout channel and can be listened to on Spotify, Apple podcasts or on other RSS podcast apps.

2.2. Ethical considerations when researching language learning processes

Source: Dr Sánchez-Pellicer

Seminar on the 12th October 2022.

Investigating cognitive processes in language learning: The use of eye tracking and related ethical considerations

In this online seminar Dr Ana Pellicer-Sánchez from UCL explores ethical considerations in research into vocabulary and language learning.

In the last decade, the field of second language acquisition has witnessed an increase in the number of studies using eye-tracking to examine the cognitive processes involved in language learning. Eye-tracking allows researchers to record learners’ eye movements while completing a task on a computer screen and provides a very rich record of online processing behaviour. It is increasingly used in the field as a measure of cognitive effort. In this presentation I will provide an introduction to the eye-tracking technique, as well as a brief overview of some of its applications in language learning research, with a particular focus on vocabulary learning. The last part of the presentation will discuss the ethical considerations in this type of research.

Dr Ana Pellicer-Sánchez is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and TESOL at the IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, UK. Her research focuses on the teaching and learning of vocabulary in a second/foreign language. Her recent research has used eye tracking to examine cognitive processes involved in vocabulary learning, with a particular focus on learning from reading. She is co-author of An Introduction to Eye-tracking: A Guide for Applied Linguistics Research (CUP) and co-editor of Understanding Formulaic Language (Routledge).

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Video hosted on the PAR YouTube channel.
Audio hosted on the PAR Buzzsprout channel and can be listened to on Spotify, Apple podcasts or on other RSS podcast apps.

2.1. Ethics and ethical considerations in practitioner research

Seminar on the 7th December 2022 from 11 to 12 UK time:

Ethics and ethical considerations in practitioner research

In this seminar Prof Kate Wall from University of Strathclyde offers a brief introduction into concerns around ethical practitioner research. Professor Wall comments on the relationship and tensions between research ethics, approval committees on the one hand, and professional ethics, standards and responsibilities on the other. In this context, she further explores the researcher’s ethical duty to not only listen to, but to adhere to children’s rights, thus to fully include and involve children in research processes. She argues that “pedagogical appropriateness” drives good practitioner-research, thus shows how practice informs methodological and practical choices in research.

Professor Wall’s work focuses on the development of pedagogies and research methodologies that facilitate effective talk about learning (metacognition). She has worked extensively in partnership with teachers of all ages and stages, using practitioner enquiry approaches and has a growing interest in how tools with pedagogic and methodological origins can be used to support theorised practice.

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Video hosted on the PAR YouTube channel.
Audio hosted on the PAR Buzzsprout channel and can be listened to on Spotify, Apple podcasts or on other RSS podcast apps.

1.10. Architecture of slowness: reflecting on the actions of historical repetitions and loops

Seminar on the 6th July 2022

Source: MButcher

Architecture of slowness: reflecting on the actions of historical repetitions and loops

The presentation focuses on two of Butcher’s recent design projects: the Silt House and Monument to Superstudio. The central aim of this focus is to present how the methodologies used in the design of these works offer alternative architectural design processes to certain contemporary architectural discourses and practices that have emerged from specific philosophical legacies of Modernity. These discourses and practices continue to promote a need for technological progress and efficiency in the design and construction of architectures. This exists in the way the profession of architecture should place greater emphasis on certain design processes focused on computation and cybernetic discourse. These processes not only reduce the space and time for critical reflection but also seek tight allegiance with determinist logics of the market, to drive efficiency in the production of architecture.

As a means of questioning this, the presentation aims to explore how one might propose an architecture of slowness, a concept that, emerged from a reading of Bruno Latour in his essay An Attempt at a ‘Compositionist Manifesto’ where the philosopher invites us to acknowledge that the ‘time of time […] has passed ’(Latour, 472) and that with this acknowledgement we must embrace a slowness so we can look around, feel and see the world in order to be more aware as we move forward. To help manifest this notion of slowness the chapter will focus on different methodologies of design that seek direct reciprocity with, and reflection on, historical architectures. These processes include performative modes of drawing that seek to mime and re-enact historical works of architecture and art.

Bruno Latour, ‘An Attempt at a “Compositionist Manifesto”,’ 471-490.

Matthew Butcher is an academic and designer. His work has been exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2009 and 2011), The Architecture Foundation Gallery, London (2011); The Architectural Association, London (2011); Prague Quadrennial, Prague (2011); V&A Museum, London (2012); Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York (2012) and Betts Project, London (2020). In 2020 His work was included in the Architecture Foundation’s publication New Architects 4 which showcased the work of the best architectural designers and practices currently working in the UK. Butcher has contributed articles and papers for journals including Conditions, Architecture Research Quarterly (ARQ), the RIBA Journal and Architecture Today. He was Guest Editor, along with Luke Pearson, of the special issue of Architectural Design (AD) titled Re-Imagining the Avant-Garde: revisiting the architecture of the 1960s and 1970s (2019) and editor of the book Expanding Fields of Architectural Discourse and Practice: Curated Works from the P.E.A.R Journal published by UCL Press (2020).

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Video hosted on the PAR YouTube channel.
Audio hosted on the PAR Buzzsprout channel and can be listened to on Spotify, Apple podcasts or on other RSS podcast apps.

The Pursuit of Excellence: The Hacked Barbie

Images of Barbie dolls that have been manipulated and changed.

Source: FManfredi

PAR network member Federica Manfredi shares The Hacked Barbie.

This post is based on the project ‘EXCEL – The Pursuit of Excellence. Biotechnologies, enhancement and body capital in Portugal’, founded by the Foundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (PTDC/SOC-ANT/30572/2017) at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais – Universidade de Lisboa with the PI Chiara Pussetti.

“La Barbie hackerata” [The Hacked Barbie] is a workshop series and a dissemination activity from the project “Excel – The Pursuit of Excellence” (www.excelproject.eu) that investigates non-therapeutic and long terms body interventions aiming to enhance the social performativity in the Portuguese society.

Research shows that cosmetic and body practices are connected with pressures and logics of excellences following hegemonic and post-colonial models of beauty, based on discriminations of gender, age, sexual orientation, the color of the skin or the shape of the eyes.

The Hacked Barbie has been organized for the first time at the World Anthropology Day 2021 as methodological experiment to interrogate participants about body’s perceptions, its modifications and body-performances in daily life. The goal was to stimulate an anthropological gaze on daily practices directed to bodies, inviting participants to re-created their corporeality on a doll in a guided-process: which body-interventions can make the Barbie, a symbol of gendered perfection, more similar to me? In other words, how do I manipulate and construct my self through my body? What models and social pressures guide my choices, mould the relationship with my body and intervene in my bodily social performance?

From the first workshop, other 5 editions collected over 63 voices of participants from Italy, Portugal, Germany, United Kingdom and Brazil, during online and in-person meetings. We discussed cosmetic surgery, tattoos, anti-aging treatments, epilation, clothing choices and diet regimes under the entanglement of social excellence and personal well-being. Working sessions revealed gendered, aged, political, cultural and hide meanings related to body interventions, as well as fragilities and emotional negotiations with perceived social pressures on how to properly perform through the body.

Recent Covid-experiences crossed childhood episodes in participants’ narrations: through our works on the metaphorical plastic-flesh, the dialogue focused on disparities for the access of body treatments, gender discriminations and the pressures we experienced as teenagers, women, workers and members of a society supposed to pursuit idealistic colonial and hierarchical models of beauty, perfection and excellence.

For more information check out the following links:

The Pursuit of Excellence
Excel YouTube channel
Excel Facebook page

Federica Manfredi is a doctoral researcher in Medical Anthropology at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon. She explores contemporary extreme body interventions, especially body suspensions, with co-participated and experimental methodologies that allow to go beyond a logo-centric logic of communication. She is interested in pain, biohacking, tattoos and altered state of consciousness, explored through practice-based qualitative methodologies.