Facilitating Visual Socialities

This edited collection seeks to enrich the dialogue about the expansive possibilities of visual sociological research facilitation. Although facilitating ethical research has long been identified within medical research literatures, there is a dearth of distinct perspectives and voices in academic theorizing when it comes to facilitating ethical research. For example, how can researchers learn and incorporate community created approaches to facilitation into their visual research approaches? Although ethics, positionality, and reflexivity remain important components of visual research, the authors argue that the incremental decisions made in real time by research facilitators within the process of visual research is currently under-theorized. This edited collection seeks to discuss how thinking about facilitation in a more critical and nuanced manner, as well as thinking through the kinds of relations, problems and local changes that happen within a project, can help visual sociological researchers move towards more equitable research practices. Casey Burkholder is an Associate Professor at the University of New Brunswick, Canada interested in critical teacher-education, and participatory visual research. Casey engages in research for social change through participatory visual approaches to local issues with youth and pre-service teachers. Joshua Schwab-Cartas is an Assistant Professor at NSCAD University, Canada. Dr. Schwab-Cartas uses cellphilms (or mobile technologies + film production) as an educational tool to explore Indigenous language revitalization strategies in the Isthmus Zapotec community of his maternal grandfather in Ranchu Gubiña, Oaxaca, Mexico. Funké Aladejebi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto focusing on Black Canadian history. Her research and teaching interests focus on oral history, the history of education in Canada, Black Canadian women’s history, and transnationalism.