Webinar: Embracing the messiness of participatory action research method in hostile environments

Join us for a webinar by Melissa Matar on June 24 – 3-4pm UK | 5-6pm Lebanon on:

Embracing the messiness of participatory action research method in hostile environments

Please register in advance here

Participatory action research (PAR) demonstrates how its politics challenges traditional social scientific approaches by embracing a democratic, critical and emancipatory approach as its foundation. However, in education and social change, PAR has been co-opted and re-defined in the interests of the dominant Westerner ideology regarding how to conduct participatory research conceptually and practically.

While my research focuses on exploring the higher education policy network established in Lebanon for Syrian refugees, implementing the participatory aspect of it has been immensely impacted by the institutionalisation of research methods for postgraduate researchers in Western academic institutions and the environment in which it is being implemented. As we are witnessing today the highest level of hostilities towards Syrian refugees in Lebanon, the question of “being aware of the context” becomes not a necessity to do as a politically reflexive researcher but a reality that is dictating the ontological and epistemological framework of the research.

I aim in this discussion to walk you through my experience from conceptualising the research design to its current implementation period, reflecting on the different elements we ought to address when thinking of PAR from a decolonial perspective and in a highly politicised environment.

Speaker: Melissa Matar

Melissa is a Postgraduate Researcher at King’s College London School of Education, Communication & Society department. Funded by the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC), her research focuses on the educational policy of access to higher education for Syrian refugees in Lebanon. She is interested in education in emergencies, educational policymaking, global education governance, social justice, and decolonial and feminist research methodologies. Melissa has previously worked in refugee education for five years at the American University of Beirut and has been involved in several research projects addressing the issue of refugees’ access to quality education in the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region.