This SSHRC-funded research project examines the research practice of activist researchers who conduct research almost entirely independently of formal partnerships or collaboration with academic researchers. This project examines how these researchers/community organizations/small NGOs understand, practice and validate their research, and how this knowledge is constructed, disseminated and mobilized as a tool for effective social action by and for social movements in contemporary struggles for social and environmental justice.
This research asks:
- How do activist researchers understand, practice and validate their research and processes of knowledge production? What are the sources of such knowledge? How is this knowledge produced?
- How do activist researchers disseminate and use knowledge produced through research in processes of knowledge mobilization, popular education
and social action? - How do social movements/social action groups engaged by activist
researchers/activist research organizations understand this relationship
and what are the empirical linkages between them?
This study builds on Aziz Choudry’s ongoing scholarly work on the politics of knowledge production and learning in social movement activism, prompted by questions arising from his extensive practice as an activist researcher, educator and organizer in the Asia-Pacific region, Canada, and globally for over two decades. He draws upon his multi-scalar participation in global justice activism and knowledge production in order to conduct this study on several sites of significant producers of research for social movement.
Contact:
Aziz Choudry, PhD
(514) 398-4527 Ext. 00952
Department of Integrated Studies in Education
3700 McTavish, Room 314
McGill University
Montreal, Quebec H3A 1Y2
