Senior Lecturer at University of Melbourne

Editorial foreword: Challenging academic participation

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
The development of participatory research practices has been linked to high hopes of creating more relevant, socially robust, and democratic forms of academic knowledge. Researchers have, however, also pointed to a discrepancy between the ideals and realities of participation, in research and elsewhere. This paper uses these critiques of participation to unfold the dilemmas of two participatory projects: <italic>RECcORD: Rethinking European Cultural Centers in a European Dimension</italic> (2015-17) and <italic>Participate: Citizen Participation in Danish Cultural Centers</italic> (2019-23). Both projects approached participation as a method that involved co-researching participants from cultural centers, and as a practice to be explored while unfolding in the centers. This paper critically discusses the methodologies of the projects by developing an evaluative framework that highlights both the participatory potentials and pitfalls of the two processes. This transferable framework is based on the concepts of ‘unpredictability’, ‘friction’, ‘autonomy’, ‘inequality’, ‘failure’, and ‘scale’. 
</abstract>

How participatory are we really? The pitfalls and potentials of participatory research practices

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
This essay explores methodological, ethical, and practical aspects of authentically co-creating participatory action research (PAR) in post-Covid 19 participatory arts contexts in the UK. It analyses the limits and possibilities of PAR methods into leadership pathways in the UK’s arts and culture sector. In critical dialogue with decolonial and intersectional frameworks that seek to challenge and transform institutionalised privilege in the wake of the Covid pandemic, we investigate the financialisation of participatory strategies of cultural co-creation, with a particular focus on questions of racial and class dynamics in the arts. This essay develops a decolonial political ontology of PAR through a critique of both authenticity and its financialisation in participatory action research projects. Drawing on recent critical analyses of ‘post-extractivism’ and ‘co-creation’ in participatory research, we suggest that the recent financialisation of ‘impactful’ participation is an increasingly important but neglected ‘matter of concern’ for critical PAR methodologies.
</abstract>

This is not ‘interesting’ research: Authentically Co-Creating Participatory Action Research in UK’s Post-Covid Culture Industries 

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
In this essay, I experiment with Lauren Berlant’s idea of ‘cruel optimism’ to explore how policies specifying responsible conduct of research within academia have effects that extend beyond efforts at establishing an untarnished university. Based on a feminist ethics of care, alongside experiences from teaching PhD students about research integrity and ethics, I unpack how culpability, vigilance and powerlessness surface. In this essay I then speculate: what would it entail to care? I suggest that there is a need to consider research ethics as an ethics that cares both for and about the university as a habitat1. 
</abstract>

Academic habitats? An essay on research ethics

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
Based on three autoethnographic cases, this article reflects on activist participation in academic systems. The three authors are activists with different attachments to and experiences of academic knowledge-work. Our experiences as activists in academia help us form the argument that many activist contributions to academic systems remain unacknowledged. We are using these overlooked cases to expand existing participatory and activist/action research that often assumes a preliminary distinction between activists and researchers. Instead, we pose critiques of participation that are neither internal (in the sense criticised by Cooke and Kothari) nor external, but formulated from positions in between as activist-academics. Our critiques of academic participation concern exploitation of student work in academic teaching, lack of acknowledgement of activist knowledge in research processes, and tendencies to dismiss activists as professional disseminators of academic knowledge.
</abstract>

Everyday Sexism Project Danmark & Student at Aarhus University

Filosofisk Forening & Student at Aarhus University

Activist Participation in Academic Systems Three autoethnographic case studies of academic-activist positions in knowledge-work

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

In <italic>A Passion for Radio: Training of Trainers</italic> José Ignacio López Vigil asserts that community radio “is (made) of flesh and bone” (2015, p. 25). In the context of authoritarianism and patriarchy in today’s Nicaragua these words suggest at least three meanings. One recalls threats to the lives and livelihoods of Nicaraguans that work for Nicaragua’s surviving independent media, including community radio, particularly following the political and humanitarian crisis that began in April 2018. Community radio as “flesh and bone” also relates to the bodies of its listening public and is examined in this paper through the prism of the feminist community radio station, Radio Vos (Radio You 101.7 FM). Radio as “flesh and bone” also serves as a metaphor for community radio’s material and operational existence, a body that functions via multiple interworking parts and systems. In discussing the challenges facing community radio in Nicaragua, this essay incorporates excerpts from an interview with Argentina Olivas, the director of <italic>Radio Vos</italic>.
</abstract>

Radio of Flesh and Bone: Community Radio in the Authoritarian and Patriarchal Context of Today’s Nicaragua

AHEAD OF PRINT

Volume 11 (2024): Issue 1 (March 2024)

Volume 10 (2023): Issue 1 (October 2023)

Volume 9 (2022): Issue 2 (October 2022)

Volume 9 (2022): Issue 1 (June 2022)

Volume 8 (2021): Issue 1 (January 2021) Health, Media and Participation

Volume 7 (2020): Issue 2 (October 2020) Failures in Cultural Participation

Volume 7 (2020): Issue 1 (July 2020) Feminism, Gender, Social Movements and Everyday Resistance

Volume 6 (2019): Issue 1 (December 2019) Cultural Participation, Social Media Affect and Art

Volume 5 (2018): Issue 1 (May 2018) Community and Creative Research. Developing Participatory Methodologies

Volume 4 (2017): Issue 1 (December 2017) Playful Participation II

Volume 3 (2016): Issue 1 (June 2016) Playful Participation

Volume 2 (2015): Issue 2 (December 2015) Participation across Institutional and Disciplinary Boundaries

Volume 2 (2015): Issue 1 (October 2015) Mediatized Cultural Activism

Volume 1 (2014): Issue 1 (November 2014) Participatory Cultural Citizenship

Conjunctions

Conjunctions seeks to create an international and transdisciplinary forum for the investigation of user-generated cultural production, user-driven cultural participation and citizen involvement across a variety of social fields, contexts and practices, e.g. urban spaces, (digital) media, social media platforms, education and teaching, the cultural sector and creative industries, aesthetic productions and museums, health institutions, activism and design.  The overall focus of the journal is to explore the socially transformative and democratic potential of cultural participation processes, to qualify the academic understanding of what ‘participation’ is and what it involves, and to discuss the complex relations created between user-generated processes and established institutions and discourses.  We take an interest in critical analyses of participatory practices, rhetoric and involvement strategies, in affirmative investigations of participation, in explorations of explicit or conscious and implicit or non-conscious forms of participation.  Submitted articles can be focused on theoretical development or on empirical analysis (of e.g. case studies). We also welcome work that use innovative or creative methods as well as more traditional methods.  The journal invites submissions from a variety of disciplinary fields such as media and communication studies, cultural studies, interaction and participatory design, cultural geography, education, aesthetics, science and technology studies, health care, health communication, information science, sociology, anthropology, development studies and gender studies.  The journal is published twice every year.  Archiving  Sciendo archives the contents of this journal in Portico - digital long-term preservation service of scholarly books, journals and collections.  Plagiarism Policy  The editorial board is participating in a growing community of Similarity Check System's users in order to ensure that the content published is original and trustworthy. Similarity Check is a medium that allows for comprehensive manuscripts screening, aimed to eliminate plagiarism and provide a high standard and quality peer-review process. 