Decolonising Research Methods

This webinar was organised by QUEST (Qualitative Expertise at Southampton) in collaboration with the National Centre for Research Methods and the South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership. It was held on 4 July 2023. The speakers were: Professor Ros Edwards of the University of Southampton, Dr Rachel Jane Liebert of the University of East London and Wanda Canton, a ESRC South Coast DTP-funded doctoral researcher at the University of Brighton

‘You don't take things too seriously or un‐seriously’: Beyond recovery to liminal and liminoid possibility in a community arts and mental health project

Recent years have seen a renewed interest in integrating creative activities into statutory mental health practice in high-income countries. In this article, we offer an exploratory analysis of an arts project delivered within UK mental health services, Creativity for Enablement and Wellbeing (CREW). Drawing on data collected for a process evaluation of the project, we suggest that conceptualising CREW as liminal and liminoid provides a helpful way to articulate the processes, atmospheres, relationships, and practices of the project. Through this theoretical lens, we identify CREW as a mode of engagement comprising looseness, possibility and collectivity, all brought together through a unique community event, the showcase. We explore CREW's mode of engagement through three themes: ‘carving out a liminal space’, ‘looseness and experimentation,’ and ‘from liminal to liminoid’. Implications for service delivery are discussed, focussing on how CREW managed to create a transformative space of liminoid possibility rather than a recovery journey delineated by service-defined imperatives

Affect and subjectivity

Editoria

Beside-the-mind: an unsettling, reparative reading of paranoia

Having undertaken a critical analysis of a transnational program of research to identify and intervene on the prodrome, a pre-psychotic state, here I experiment with an unsettling, reparative reading of its affective coils—paranoia. Etymologically joining para (beside) with nous (mind), “paranoia” denotes an experience beside-the-mind. I attempt to follow these roots, meeting a non-human figure—Coatlicue—as introduced through Chicana philosopher and poet, Gloria Anzaldúa. In the arms of this goddess, the prodrome points to the vitality and the milieu of paranoia, re-turning it as a capacity, calling for modes of attunement and apprenticeship, and perhaps protecting our psychological and political practices against yet another operation of colonialist capture. Challenging the subject, interlocutors, and form typically adopted by not just Psychology but Affect Studies too, I hope in this performative essay to also lift up the problems and possibilities of Walter Mignolo’s ‘border thinking’ as a means to open the potential decoloniality, and thus response-ability, of these fields within the present political moment

Inclusive reading lists: how libraries can support student and academic leadership

Informed by student leadership and by practice at other modern universities, libraries are working with academic colleagues to look at the inclusiveness of reading lists to support a diverse curriculum. This paper offers examples from other university libraries already working in this area with BAME academic leadership and will discuss different ways this topic can be framed and approached to maximise reach and impact. Reading lists and the curriculum are interwoven, and inclusiveness within the curriculum needs to be mirrored by course recommended reading. This is a joint project between module teams and librarians to investigate the situation and look for opportunities to make reading lists more representative of the diversity of our student body within the subject content. We will discuss how representation of our students' diversity in their recommended reading is one aspect of developing an inclusive curriculum to address and narrow the University's BAME degree-awarding gap. Inclusiveness of reading lists is multi-faceted, and covers content from within the material on the reading list, inclusion of diverse authors and decolonising of reading lists, structure of the list, and accessibility of both the list and materials