Place Matters: Mapping Stories and Resisting Erasure through Testimonio and Counter-Mapping

• In Event: Imagining Liberatory Futures: Pedagogical Resistance in the Past, Present, and Future through Abolitionist Place-Based Methods

Abstract

Educational research has long emphasized social and historical factors while neglecting the spatial dimensions of lived experience. Yet, centering place is critical for understanding inequity and creating liberatory futures across diverse settings. Place is not static or neutral; it is a dynamic, relational process that both shapes and is shaped by those who inhabit it (Soja, 2010; Tuck & McKenzie, 2015). Places can reinforce dominant power structures, ideologies, and oppression. Yet, as hooks (1990) reminds us, they can also serve as vital spaces of resistance, where marginalized communities come together to build solidarity and challenge systemic inequities. Recognizing how place intersects with power, access, and identity is essential for advancing social justice in education.

In my research, I blend Critical Place Inquiry (Tuck & McKenzie, 2015) and Borderlands (Anzaldúa, 1987) frameworks to explore Latiné place-making in a suburban diasporic community, examining how residents actively shape, claim, and narrate place amidst histories of exclusion. Through participatory and critical methods, including testimonio and counter-mapping, I approach place not as a passive backdrop but as a site actively produced through memory, schooling, and practices of survival, care, and resistance. Testimonio, grounded in Chicana and Latina feminist traditions centers lived experience and community memory as knowledge (Delgado-Bernal et. al 2012). Counter-mapping resists dominant spatial narratives by highlighting the geographies, histories and resistance strategies of marginalized communities. Together, these methods foster critical spatial inquiry that surfaces hidden narratives and opens possibilities for imagining liberatory futures.

In this workshop, I will guide participants in exploring testimonio and counter-mapping as tools for bringing spatial lenses into educational research and practice. These methods illuminate how inequities, identity, and belonging are entangled with the geographies of everyday life and demonstrate how centering place can surface narratives often excluded from curriculum and scholarship. Participants will engage in critical spatial inquiry that invites them to both document and reimagine place, experimenting with these methods as bridges between research and pedagogy. Within the context of our collective workshop, my segment complements the multimodal and world-building practices of fellow facilitators, showing how spatial and narrative methods position place as a site of identity, resistance, and possibility. Participants will leave with strategies to integrate testimonio and counter-mapping into their own work in research and education, fostering practices that both resist erasure and imagine liberatory futures.

Author

• Michelle R. Ochoa, Graduate Center - CUNY