Ninth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry
May 15-18, 2013

Download QI2012 Preliminary Program

QUALITATIVE INQUIRY OUTSIDE THE ACADEMY

Keynote speakers

Audience Matters

Laurel Richardson, Ohio State University

If research falls in the academy,… For whom do we write? Only for each other? Why do we publish where we do? Only for our academic advancement? What about the myriad of possible audiences outside the academy? How might we reach them? How about jumping out of the box? Off the page? We can make a difference; we can affect quality of people’s lives. If we reach them.

Freeing Ourselves.

Russell Bishop, University of Waikato Hamilton, New Zealand.

In this talk I intend detailing the development of an indigenous response to neo-colonial dominance in research, classrooms, schools and education systems. This talk will detail the journey over time that has led me from researching the impact of colonization on my mother’s Maori family to an appreciation of just what researching in Maori contexts involves. The lessons learnt here also appealed to me, as an ex-secondary school teacher, as being a means by which the marginalization of Maori students in mainstream classrooms could be re-theorised. From this understanding was a means whereby educators could reposition themselves discursively and createcaring and learning relationships within mainstream classrooms that would see Maori students benefitting from their participation in education. From these theoretical beginnings grew a large-scale classroom-based project that eventually developed into a comprehensive approach towards theory or principle-based education reform that is now being implemented, in two different forms, in 150 secondary schools in New Zealand.

Fundamental to this theorising and practice were the understandings promoted by Paulo Freire over forty years ago, that the answers to the conditions that oppressed peoples found themselves in was not to be found in the language or epistemologies of the oppressors, but rather in that of the oppressed. Thisrealisation was confirmed when I understood that researching in Maori contexts needed to be conducted dialogically within the world view and understandings of the people with whom I was working. This realisation also led me to understand how dialogue in its widest sense is crucial for developing a means whereby Maori students would be able to participate successfully in education.

Further reading: Bishop, R. (2011). Freeing Ourselves. Rotterdam. Sense Publishers.

Plenary Performance

"Passage"

Christopher C Collins, Angelo State University
Friday May 17: 5:30-6:30, Levis 3rd Floor

"Passage" is a solo-performance in which Christopher C Collins explores his journey following the African Slave Trade through Barbados, London, and Nigeria. Through autoethnographic accounts and several composite characters, ³Passage² explores acts of liminality, being and becoming, and the poetics of memory as an axis point for the historically performed body. In so doing, he investigates the performativity of his historically constructed identity and its continuous transformation.