POSTPONED-Masterclass: Positionality, Power, and Participants in Research

A two-hour Masterclass to be delivered by Associate Professor Bina Fernadez and Professor Karen Karen Farquharson.

Unfortunately, due to the latest lockdown in Melbourne, the Masterclass that was scheduled for Monday, 19 July 2021 has been postponed.

We hope to be able to run the session in-person later in the year and will be in touch with details as soon as alternative arrangements are confirmed. If you made a donation when registering and would like a refund now, please get in touch.

A researcher’s intersectional social positioning necessarily affects their research topic, approach and implementation. How do we, as researchers, navigate doing our research? How are research power dynamics shaped by our own positionality and context? If our goal is to enable participants to have a voice, how do we do that?

Drawing on our personal experiences as minority researchers in different contexts, we will discuss how our intersecting positionalities as researchers shape and are shaped by our research context. We will discuss issues of power and voice, the role of our own ontological positioning in shaping our research approach, and the importance of context. We will also discuss the logistics and practical considerations regarding doing research as a minority researcher.

This session will be structured as an interactive discussion on positionality, power and participants in research. Participants in the session will be asked to reflect on these issues and share their experience, knowledge and tips for successful research.

Register to attend here.

About the Speakers

Bina Fernandez is Associate Professor in Development Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research focuses on gender, migration and social policy, and illuminates how a feminist analysis of social reproduction is critical to the understanding of poor and ethnic minority women’s precarious access to resources, and consequently to the construction of policy interventions to improve their access to and control over such resources. Key publications include the monographs Ethiopian Migrant Domestic Workers: Migrant Agency and Social Change (2020) and Transformative Policy for Poor Women: a new feminist framework (2012).

Karen Farquharson is Professor of Sociology and Head of the Deputy Vice-President of Academic Board at The University of Melbourne. Her research explores the sociology of racism, migration, media and sport from a critical race theory perspective. Major research projects include: Participation versus performance: Managing (dis)ability, gender and cultural diversity in junior sport, the AuSud Media Project, and the Koorie Energy Efficiency Project (KEEP). Her most recent books are the co-edited collections Australian Media and the Politics of Belonging (2018) and Relating Worlds of Racism: Dehumanisation, Belonging, and the Normativity of European Whiteness (2019).