The whyPAR Podcast

“Creating joyful resistance in communities”: On Visual Participatory Methods with Casey Burkholder

This episode features Dr. Casey Burkholder, with podcast host, Dr. Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández. In this conversation, Casey shares about her experience doing participatory visual research with queer and trans communities in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland. She also tells us about her work with teacher candidates in New Brunswick, where she thinks alongside classroom educators about sex education in schools. Casey shares valuable insights about the power of the visual, participatory archiving and dissemination practices, and research ethics when working with queer and trans participants. Dr. Casey Burkholder is an Associate Professor at the University of New Brunswick, interested in critical teacher-education, and participatory visual research. In choosing a research path at the intersection of resistance&activism, gender, sexuality, DIY media-making, art production and participatory archiving, Casey engages in research for social change through participatory visual approaches to local issues with queer & trans youth, adults, elders, and pre-service teachers. She is the co-founder of the Fredericton Feminist Film Collective, and PI of Pride/Swell+.

“People who live in their neighbourhoods know it better”: On community engaged and participatory urban planning research with Dr. Aditi Mehta

This episode features Dr. Aditi Mehta, Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at the University of Toronto, and podcast host Dr. Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández, Professor and Director of the Youth Research Lab here at OISE. Drawing on her diverse experiences conducting PAR neighbourhoods in the USA and Canada, Dr. Mehta reflects on the politics of knowledge production and dissemination within contexts of urban community development and public health. Together, they discuss the dynamics of community collaboration and partnerships, and the important distinction between participatory research and education. Dr. Aditi Mehta is an Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at the University of Toronto and was a community-engaged learning faculty fellow at the Centre for Community Partnerships. She completed her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and was awarded the department’s most outstanding dissertation prize for her investigation of the politics of community media in post-disaster cities. Her research and pedagogy consider environmental justice, community development, technology, and how knowledge infrastructures influence policy. She was recently awarded the Social Science and Humanities Research Council Partnership Engagement Grant for her participatory action research course in which UofT students and youth living in Toronto's Regent Park neighbourhood collaborated to research local experiences of redevelopment and the COVID-19 pandemic. This episode was hosted and directed by Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandez, produced by Qichun Zhang, and supported by Youth Research Lab assistant Madeleine Ross.

“There’s no one way to do this”: On youth-adult partnerships and embracing complexity, a conversation with Sharif Mahdy, Stoney McCart, Kwaku Agyemang, and Maddy Ross

This episode features Sharif Mahdy, Stoney McCart, Kwaku Agyemang from the Students Commission of Canada (SCC) and podcast host Maddy Ross. In this conversation, they reflect on how the SCC’s origins at a national youth conference in 1991 helped to shape four core values, referred to as the Four Pillars, as a process for youth engagement. Drawing on these Four Pillars - Respect, Listen, Understand and Communicate™️ - as a research framework, they discuss the dynamics of producing knowledge through youth-adult partnerships and why addressing adult positionalities is a critical dimension of conducting YPAR.   The Students Commission of Canada is a national charitable intergenerational organization that purposely works with others to ensure that young people’s voices are heard and valued so that their ideas for improving themselves, their peers and their communities can be put into action. In 2000, the SCC was named the lead organization for the Centre of Excellence for Youth Engagement (CEYE): a network of youth, youth-serving organizations, academics and policy-makers focused on identifying and sharing best practices on meaningful youth engagement and the impact of youth engagement initiatives.

“Not everything can be fully participatory, right?”: On "True" PAR, A Conversation between Aurora Santiago-Ortiz and Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández

This episode features conversation between Dr. Aurora Santiago-Ortiz, Assistant Professor of Gender and Women studies the University of Wisconsin, Madison, with podcast host Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández, a Professor here at OISE, the Director of the Youth Research Lab, and one of the Co-Producers of The WhyPAR podcast. In this episode, Aurora and Rubén discuss the principles that constitute “pure” PAR, and how principles of PAR can be adapted across diverse contexts. They discuss themes including challenges of conducting PAR during the COVID-19 pandemic, facilitating equitable participation in PAR, and the role of solidarity in community spaces. Aurora discusses her work both with the community organization Colectivo Casco Urbano de Cayey and with Latinx migrants in Lexington, Kentucky. Aurora Santiago Ortiz, PhD, is 2020 Ford Dissertation Fellow and current Lyman T. Johnson Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Kentucky. She obtained her PhD from the Social Justice Education program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her work examines community based, participatory action research and critical methodologies; anticolonial, queer, feminist, and antiracist social movements; and decolonial feminisms. Aurora’s website - https://www.aurorasantiago-ortiz.com/ [https://www.aurorasantiago-ortiz.com/] Aurora’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/santiaaurora?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor [https://twitter.com/santiaaurora?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor] Aurora’s dissertation - Collaboration, Collective Agency, and Solidarity Through Participatory Action Research in Puerto Rico [https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3290&context=dissertations_2] -  https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/2218/ [https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/2218/] Research in Progress: “La solidaridad no perece”: Community organizing, political agency, and mutual aid in Puerto Rico. Peer-reviewed journal article for Curriculum Inquiry. Colectivo Casco Urbano de Cayey Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ccucayey/ [https://www.facebook.com/ccucayey/] Colectivo Casco Urbano de Cayey webite https://ccucayey.wixsite.com/website?fbclid=IwAR0D4rxArwyF3iGkNbea9ScHZDpANRBeTxZJdZ3vLfC4Lu0Zqr9f0shj13U [https://ccucayey.wixsite.com/website?fbclid=IwAR0D4rxArwyF3iGkNbea9ScHZDpANRBeTxZJdZ3vLfC4Lu0Zqr9f0shj13U] Colectivo Casco Urbano de Cayey instagram-  https://www.instagram.com/ccucayey2020/?hl=en [https://www.instagram.com/ccucayey2020/?hl=en] La Colectiva Feminista en Construcción https://www.facebook.com/Colectiva.Feminista.PR/ [https://www.facebook.com/Colectiva.Feminista.PR/]

“What happens when you run onto the edges of progressivism?”: On Conducting YPAR in Elite Schools, A Conversation Between Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández and Leila Angod

This episode features conversation between Dr. Leila Angod, Assistant Professor in the Childhood and Youth Studies Program at Carleton University, and a former postdoctoral fellow at the Youth Research Lab with podcast host Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández, a Professor here at OISE, the Director of the Youth Research Lab, and one of the Co-Producers of The Why PAR podcast. In this episode, Leila and Rubén discuss the challenges of doing YPAR within the context of elite institutions. They discuss themes including using YPAR to subvert schooling, the ethics of negotiating youth knowledge dissemination, elite institutions as mechanisms of erasure and forgetting, and YPAR’s impact as subjective rather than institutional change. Dr. Leila Angod [https://can01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcarleton.ca%2Fiis%2Fpeople%2Fleila-angod%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cnaima.raza%40mail.utoronto.ca%7Cf4fc6e76c41944e2d3f108d9f7cb78e9%7C78aac2262f034b4d9037b46d56c55210%7C0%7C0%7C637813275549487026%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=9Gj6PduWMJW1PQ5kkUO1EG%2FEZBWCHS1VESnEXZabsIw%3D&reserved=0](she/her) is Assistant Professor in the Childhood and Youth Studies Program at Carleton University’s Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies. Her research examines how schools invite young people to enact racial and colonial orders, and how youth engage, resist, and refuse these invitations. Leila examines the methodological, political, and ethical possibilities and constraints of using yPAR to create feminist, anti-racist communities for students of colour. She is the co-founder of the Youth Research Lab’s youth-led journal, in:cite [https://can01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fincitejournal.org%2Findex.php%2Fincite&data=04%7C01%7Cnaima.raza%40mail.utoronto.ca%7Cf4fc6e76c41944e2d3f108d9f7cb78e9%7C78aac2262f034b4d9037b46d56c55210%7C0%7C0%7C637813275549487026%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=C7jBTofSBXZDKD77vPubeSi%2BRoGFQeiodKsNnaZe3f4%3D&reserved=0]. Her current yPAR project explores the making of Afro-Asian girls’ collectives as humanizing spaces that counter the violence of schooling and Canadian white supremacy. Leila is writing a young adult novel that mobilizes speculative fiction to explore themes of colonialism, race, and feminist community-making in the context of Canadian elite schools.