Liberating Methodologies: Reclaiming Research as a Site for Radical Inquiry and Transformation

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 38
  In Roundtable Session: Scholar-Researcher-Teacher Activist

Abstract

Cognizant that research is by no means the answer to the woes of the world, it is part of the puzzle wherein we hold sacred space for intentional inquiry and collaborative meaning making. This paper prods into the methodological tensions and possibilities of portraiture as a humanizing methodology. I seek to answer: What does it mean to see one another—and ourselves—through a process of discovery that is personal and political? How does the process of inquiry shape the final stories that unfold? And what kinds of research methods embody scholar activism? These questions help push against the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual entrapment of settler colonialism that infects life, including the ways we conceive of how we be scholarly.

Author

• Vajra M. Watson, University of California - Davis