Conference Agenda

Researching diversity and inequality relations within inequality relations brings with it various difficulties. Our projects are situated in different regions of Europe, thus what combines us and our projects is that we are facing very similar struggles while trying to find ways of navigating the multiple dilemmas when researching in hegemonic orders of knowledge. How can we try to widen or intervene in the boundaries set by eurocentric and powerful orders in academia and research? What forms of knowledge production can contribute to its democratisation or at least open up spaces for its critique? How can we deal with the issue that every speaking in academic settings reproduces colonial orders of knowledge which we aim to overcome? Taking up these questions we will use our projects to think about different ways of dealing and failing with/in these contradictions. Specifically we draw on two traditions: PAR (Participatory Action Research) and (biographical) reconstructive approaches. In both traditions, the claim of a bottom-up and power critical science (Fine & Torre, 2021; Dausien 2015 and 1994) which tries to intervene in hegemonic single stories, can be found. In the reconstructive tradition, however, this claim tends to be associated with the goal to a trained break-up of societal constructions and social conditions, which as a presuppositional working mode then remains reserved for a smaller circle of scholars. Does that leave only the role of informants for the marginalized, for those who do research ‘from below’? PAR on the other hand, relies more on the participation of non-professional researchers in as many phases and areas of research as possible - but with the danger of not going "deeper", of not being able to break one's own entanglements in social conditions due to limited time and financial resources in the fields?

How do our projects position themselves in relation to these questions and contradictions? What can we contribute to this debate with a methodological critique (from within) and possibilities for change?

Diren Yesil’s research on anti-Kurdish racism in Germany, in which she conducts narrative-biographical interviews with Kurds, is concerned with the question of how a decolonial research practice can not only shift the content of hegemonic knowledge orders, but also contribute to a recognition of different ways of articulation.Teresa Dias brings in contributions of participatory action research processes with young people between 12 and 16 years old in Portugal. She works on how young athletes develop projects in/with the community through sport. Based on the training actions, young people realised how they could get to know their community spaces better and identify the problems that exist there assuming a "problem-based solution” approach. Michael Doblmair asks as an activist researcher from the perspectives of the social movement research how to combine research and political activism in the field of educational protests in Austria. Particularly is he interested in the research processes understood as educational processes from teacher-activists. In her presentation, Grete Erckmann focuses first on the difference and relationship between the “co-researcher principle”, other participatory research approaches and reconstructive research methodology. To then discuss possible connections and potentials of these epistemological and methodological approaches based on her PhD research project “Living Youth in a Migration Society” in a German City. Marlene Märker and Jacqueline Hackl will discuss modes of combination of biographical-reconstructive and participatory approaches while reflecting on the restrictive conditions of PhD projects which set boundaries to their research in various ways. Focussing on the dilemmas which arise specifically with these approaches they will speak about their ways of navigating these issues when designing and working on their projects in Austria.