Justice-Centred Storytelling and Research

11 August 2023

For this Ibali Knowledge Hub feature, we are excited to have engaged with Professor Anna CohenMiller. In this feature, she shared her work, ideas and insights with Dr Jennifer Agbaire and Dr Faith Mkwananzi. Anna specialises in arts-based research to facilitate and amplify voice of marginalised, overlooked/misheard, and colonised communities, focusing on guiding and empowering early career researchers and demystifying justice-centred research. She is a TEDx speaker and multi-award-winning qualitative methodologist and educational leader who uses transformational research and leadership to address issues of equity, inclusion, and justice in higher education internationally. After almost eight years in Kazakhstan leading the development of a new research university, Dr. CohenMiller moved to Europe, living and working in Spain and Norway, accepting a position as full Professor of Pedagogy leading research and pedagogy at Nord University, Norway.  Her recent methodological textbooks include Questions in Qualitative Social Justice Research in Multicultural Contexts (which won the AERA QUAL SIG Outstanding Book Award) and the forthcoming book, Transformative Moments in Qualitative Research: Method, Theory, and Reflection, which has been referred to as a “must read” for all qualitative researchers committed to enhancing justice in practice. For collaborations and consulting, feel free to reach out at www.anna.cohenmiller.com.

What does your storytelling work entail? 

When I think about my work in mentoring and empowering early career researchers and practitioners in justice-centred research, I think about the questions I’ve heard over the years: What is the best way to conduct an interview? What is it really like in the field? What if I mess up? These are research questions that can be answered with direct responses, literature detailing data and analytics, procedural steps, are all useful and practical and needed. And since these are also questions that have emotions of deep feelings behind them (e.g., concern, worry, fear, curiosity, interest, excitement), I have sought ways to bring together the real-world experiences of conducting research, struggles and successes and failures, to showcase to others the pitfalls, the inspirational moments, and applicable insights and guidance for one’s own life and justice-centred research practice. Through these processes of learning from others directly and indirectly, from those across global borders of Majority World, we can see our humanity and humility, and work towards decolonising research practice and education broadly.

 Why storytelling?

Through storytelling, the intricacies of research can emerge, especially I have found this to be true when integrating visuals with words. Storytelling is a human experience, one practiced before written words, embraced by children, maintained by elders, nurtured in many Indigenous communities, and offering long-lasting effects for learning, growth and cross-cultural understanding. In my latest book, Transformative Moments in Qualitative Research: Method, Theory, and Reflection, I extend my work in connecting social justice research with critical self-reflection as a form of contemplative inquiry to become more aware, centred and ready to address issues of justice. I sought out contributions from across the globe from well-known scholars and early career researchers of short stories of life-changing moments of research – those moments that continued in their minds and hearts for some powerful reason. With each story is one or more images that further offer a means to both understand the experiences of the researcher/practitioner and to critically self-reflect upon for our own practice and life. For instance, Patti Lather discussing feminist, decolonial research and her loss of voice in working in South Africa may not apply directly to someone else reading her story, but we can think about how we might respond in a similar situation, or when faced with a challenge of belonging, and thinking of whose voice counts.

Your work is obviously justice-centred. How has it featured educational inclusion?

Throughout my career, I have focused on educational equity and inclusion. This emphasis was galvanised during my PhD journey when I started my program examining informal learning through popular culture, highlighting the ways in which challenging and negative gender and racialised stereotypes are propagated and affect our daily lives. Then I became pregnant with my first child, and two of my classmates did as well. And I saw how we were treated, extreme differences and no policy to fall back on to offer guidance or support for being a doctoral student mother. From there, I changed my research topic to studying what I refer to as “DocMamas” and the phenomenon of motherhood and mothering in academia. Doctoral student mothers had been missing from the literature and from educational inclusion generally. Using an innovative qualitative research method that incorporated drawings with phenomenology, I worked with the ‘DocMamas’, and we were able to engage audiences with the drawings and the words shared. 

I then moved to Kazakhstan to help lead the development of a new research university and from there continued my work on equity and inclusion for mothers in academia. I began The Motherscholar Project, an online arts-based platform to showcase the presence of mothers throughout the academic pipeline from student to professor emeritus from around the globe. On the site, you can see an image of each motherscholar, a selfie of each person shared as a snapshot story of who they are – their role in academia, the ages of their children, their general geographic location and their self-identified ethnicity. Seeing ourselves represented in media matters, whether in a pop culture format or an advocacy community platform. 

During the COVID-19 initial set of lockdowns, I built upon this advocacy in developing an online photovoice project highlighting the stories and visuals of the real-lived experiences of motherscholars suddenly at home leading children through learning online.  At the time, many internationally considered that being home was an advantage for workers, a chance for a “vacation.” This project helped to showcase the ways motherscholars navigated and handled this uniquely stressful time, especially noting how those caretaking children with special needs have frequently been overlooked. Ultimately, the project offered an innovative practice for using photovoice in an asynchronous mode to connect with a hard-to-reach population to hear their stories, and highlighted the needed change in organisational culture emphasising a culture of care. 

Generally, my work contributes to inclusion in education through accessible, approachable, empowering texts and guidance around topics of equity and inclusion in higher education. Throughout the years, I have continued to expand on equity and inclusion in education through a focus on justice-centred research and practice and decolonial methods, integrating my innovative arts-based research work to offer mentoring and empowerment for early career researchers and practitioners around justice-centred research. The format of this work ranges from collaborating with others to develop organisations, developing hands-on workshops, public scholarship, and variety of texts (e.g., videos, articles, reports, books).  

It seems that your recent book is a must-read for those interested in innovative and inclusive research methods. What do you hope to achieve with it?  

I hope that Transformative Moments in Qualitative Research: Method, Theory, and Reflection offers encouragement to early career researchers, practitioners and more seasoned researchers to (1) see glimpses of themselves in the real-world examples of research, to (2) feel empowered to face their own realities of research around the world, and (3) ultimately to enhance justice-centred research wherever it is needed from a stance of humility and learning through storytelling. 

How do you hope to use storytelling in the future? 

I hope to continue to expand upon using storytelling as a means of integrating teaching and learning about justice-centred research. Learning about others’ experiences and critically self-reflecting on its relationship to ourselves encourages us to become more self-aware and hopefully willing to grow and become “better” people and researchers who can make a positive difference in the world with others. I see this developing in various ways, such as in my new Professor role at Nord University in Norway, in my community work in Spain, and my continuing networks in Central Asia and internationally, where hearing stories can facilitate an awareness of the worldwide community we are in as justice-centred researchers. As I note in my book, we are never alone, we just have to look up and see who else is in there, and life-changing stories of research, of success and challenge and failure, help us see that we’re human and can grow.

Congratulations on your new role! Any ideas for early career researchers planning on using storytelling in their projects?

Yes! Reach out to others and explore texts and ideas, asking yourself critical self-reflection questions, such as: 

• Why do I want to use storytelling? 
• What is its purpose for my work? 
• What else would I use if not storytelling, if anything?

• What speaks to me about this work? 
• Which texts make me feel something? What do I feel? 
• What do I like about the format, ideas, directions? 
• What do I not like? 
• How do the texts encourage me to move forward, if at all (e.g., take action, consider, engage, settle, provoke)? 

Once settled on storytelling as part of the project, then we could ask ourselves such questions as: 

• Who might I need to reach out to to learn more? 
• What resources might I need?
• What format of storytelling appeals to me personally? Professionally? 
• How can I develop/maintain alignment between the storytelling I seek to include and the purpose/aim of my project? 

Thank you for this contribution, Anna!