Conference Agenda

The ‘trauma’ industry is one of the most increasingly thriving enterprises in the world over the last few decades. The predominant approach of conceptualising human suffering in the context of ‘trauma’ is on mastering specific techniques that are aimed at alleviating specific symptoms and other forms of discomfort and anguish. This presentation will explore the importance of appreciating the role of imperceptibly constructing epistemological presuppositions that position us in ways that we adopt certain perspectives in perceiving relevant events and experiences. What is the role of ‘curating’ societal discourses that construct commodifying human suffering? How do we inadvertently develop a ‘victim identity’ in those we want to help? What other identities are constructed from such ‘curating’ of societal discourses? Is there an epistemological framework that can overcome such distortions?

Public engagement with research has a prominent role to play in today’s research landscape, which is hallmarked by complex, interconnected, and deeply embedded challenges relevant to our everyday lives.

Over the past few decades, interactions between research communities and publics have changed, becoming more attuned to building trusted relationships, addressing real-world concerns, and involving people more deeply in the research journeys that ultimately affect them. Added to this, the rise of misinformation and misgivings around academic expertise, makes it more important than ever to foster inclusive and democratic forms of knowledge creation.

For qualitative inquiry–based research this is very relevant, with participatory and engaged approaches foregrounding the very purpose of research and encouraging the inclusion of people’s lived experiences, the voices of underrepresented communities, and in spotlighting different social and cultural contexts.

However, important questions remain - such as how to further break down the barriers between academia and society and how we address practical impedances to help individual researchers or teams build and sustain community-research partnerships.

This presentation will explore these issues, while sharing some experiences from the European Science Engagement Association, which turns 25 years old in 2026 and represents a diverse family of Universities, NGOs, cultural bodies and other actors sharing a common interest to advance public engagement within the research and innovation ecosystem. Some current resources and initiatives will also be highlighted for those interested to develop networks or ideas further.

My presentation is inspired by the focus of this year’s ECQI Congress: Global Flows, Connections, Dialogues and Collaborative Practices in Challenging Times. Such a focus captures my own research on Greek diasporas and allows me to reflect on it as a life-long project. More specifically, I address the topic of “returning home” for a Greek diaspora community in Australia, both in groups and as individuals, over a period stretching from the early decades of the 20th century to the present, in my attempt to explore these diverse “journeys” and the different relationships with home which various members of this diaspora have manifested over the years. What constitutes “home” for diaspora individuals? In what ways do they “return home”, if they do? How have these returns been transformed in today’s globalizing conditions and challenging times? And how can we, as researchers, address these transformations, study and attempt to interpret them?

Among the various qualitative methods I have employed in conducting research on this topic, multi-sited and longitudinal fieldwork and collaborative ethnography have proved to be of paramount value. In my talk I will consider the stories of Greek migrants and their descendants who return home physically, or mentally and emotionally, according to their circumstances and worldviews. Some of these returns are linked to active involvement with the ancestral land and its society, inspired by a sense of intergenerational debt to their forebears. Other returns are purely imaginary, revolving round symbols and myths associated with the ancestral homeland. Yet other return journeys involve representations of the homeland in writing, on websites, or in other artistic creations. In all of these stories, I have employed collaborative methods during my research, to reach, I feel, a deeper understanding of “home” as the family- and community-orientated past that diaspora individuals carry and deal with over the course of their lives. In an auto-ethnographic sense, these stories also form my own attempt to ‘return home’.