Participating the Participatory
Our research will seek to understand how researchers can benefit from the cross-cultural exchange, cross-disciplinary collaboration, decolonial and intersectional feminist pedagogies. Today many institutions foster and emphasize the importance of inclusive learning environments, but the question of how this inclusiveness is being manifested within their research practice remains largely unexplored. Participatory design of research seems to provide an answer across a variety of disciplines from academic research to community art projects. While many institutions share manuals on tools, methods, and techniques for participatory engagement with communities/subjects of study it remains a question how one could adopt techniques and methodologies he/she is used to working within the context of a given community. What are the ways of reinventing your participatory research toolbox together with the subjects of the study?
So, the research process within this group will revolve around the meaning, power, and potential of different participation techniques to create a common space and ensure inclusiveness. Is there such a thing as pre-research for participatory method design? If yes, what does this process entail? How a truly inclusive participatory research can make a room for the missing voices and narratives and reflect the multitude of diverse and diverging backgrounds?
People
Nazaket Azimli, Nazaket (she/her) is an urbanist, researcher and project manager with a background intertwining between development cooperation, curation, placemaking and participatory planning. In the field of urbanism what really interests her is how the rapid scale urbanization and new development trends within it influence people’s daily lives and long-term well being. With her practice she is trying to understand how people can partake in the formation of the built and soft environment around them, how space is negotiated and in what way people can claim their right to the city.
Mujgan Abdulzade, Mujgan (she/her) is a visual designer with a strong focus on information design and design research. As a designer and researcher, she has been working in the overlapping spaces of design, social science and community building. She completed her master’s degree in Integrated Design, in Dessau, Germany with the thesis topic exploring patriarchal roots of pictogram design. Since then, she was enrolled in several design research workshops, organized by a design platform, Futuress which deals with the politics of design.
Estivariz Lopez Chiara Alissa, CH.LO's (she/her) sees herself as a transdisciplinary actor between performance, textiles, graphics, architecture and film. Her research ranges from textile surfaces, film and sound to the performative exploration of textures in the natural sciences. Her language is a poetically critical one, through which she projects an intense visual language into spaces.
Siu Hei, Siu Hei is a theatre director from Hong Kong, and currently studying his masters in dramaturgy in Zurich University of the Arts.
