Course Overview

PUTTING RESEARCH TO WORK FOR FOOD SYSTEM TRANSFORMATION

Participatory, transdisciplinary and action research have become widely recognized as vital approaches for agroecology and food sovereignty. These approaches require a careful and intentional cultivation of a researcher’s commitments, skill and competencies. Students will learn how participatory action research can deepen our collective understanding of complex issues and support social transformations for social justice and sustainability. We will use participatory learning methods to form a learning community to engage in theory, build skills, learn new methods and cultivate a critical self-awareness as a researcher.

COURSE DAYS & TIMES:

Fall 2024 Semester: August 26 – December 6

Required online meetings every Tuesday, 12pm-2pm Eastern

In this course, we will form a learning community that will collectively shape the course content and methodology based on the interests and proclivities of the course participants. In this way, the methodology of the course will aim to embody and model practices that are crucial to participatory action research – horizontality, collective critical thinking, adaptive planning and an ethic of care. The class activities and assignments for this class have crafted the assignments in a way that are designed to be useful for everyone, and allows each student to explore topics of most interest to them.

Module 1 - Introduction to PAR and the Politics of Knowledge

The class will begin with a focus on establishing our learning community and getting to know one another. After an introduction to participatory action research, we will build a foundation for our learning by examining the ‘politics of knowledge’ or the ways that power and privilege shape science, academia, innovation and development. To this end, we will engage with critical theoretical traditions, such as feminism and decolonizing methodologies, to help students understand and challenge oppressive power relations in society as they are expressed in the knowledge systems that we are embedded within. If this sounds like challenging material, that’s because it is! But don’t stress too much, we’ll do our best to demystify and unpack these concepts together and to ground these ideas in relation to our own work, lives, and perspectives.

Module 2 – Approaches and Methods

In Module 2, we will learn about the nuts and bolts of doing Participatory Action Research (PAR), and learn about different approaches and methods that are used by collectives of co-researchers seeking to address problems of common practical and political concern. We will shine a spotlight on several methods used within this tradition including, for example, participatory video, citizen science, popular education, theatre, deliberative methodologies, auto-ethnography and different forms of qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods inquiry. Students will learn how transdisciplinary and PAR approaches are applied to topics in food system studies and action. We will examine examples of agroecological PAR projects, to draw lessons learned and to find inspiration.

Module 3 - Special Issues and Topics

Module 3 will be entirely co-constructed by the learning community where we will module where we will focus on special topics and issues identified as priority learning areas by the class.