Hosted by the Humanities Center and faculty fellow, Daniel Heifetz. Respondents include Janina López from the History of Art and Architecture department and Hiba Siddiqui, Humanities Center Undergraduate Fellow. This event will be hybrid, so you can attend it either in person in 602 CL or via Zoom as you prefer.

In an ongoing project about Queer Desis (diaspora South Asians), Heifetz has adopted a community-based participatory research (CBPR) model. In CBPR, a researcher learns what a community’s interests are, then involves community members in designing and carrying out research that serves those interests. In this colloquium session, Heifetz will address methodological challenges associated with implementing CBPR in this project. One of the risks of CBPR is that it can obfuscate a scholar’s power and positionality while instrumentalizing community for the sake of legitimation. CBPR also creates outcomes that can be at odds with institutional norms for academic productivity; for example, Heifetz’s community collaborators requested that this research culminate in a gala and zine.

Precirculated material for this colloquium will be available here about two weeks prior and up to the event.