Collaborative @ Leuven
Workshop 3 of the “Towards innovative mixed-methods approaches to studying living multiculture in small cities” seminar series organised by Stef De Sabbata, Katy Bennett, Matteo Dutto, Lee Eisold, Alex Govers Lopez, Maarten Loopmans and Giorgia Mascaro and funded by the (USF Seminar Series Awards).
Held online on Tuesday, June 4th, 2024.
About this event
In a new era of global migration, diverse forms of urban mobility, migration settlement, and resettlement have contributed to the reshaping of national populations and localities, paving the way for new encounters, exchanges, and tensions (Neal et al. 2017). In this context, cities are not only the terrain on which these entangled relationships unfold, but these relationships shape them. Indeed, studies on multiculture demand a new focus on place and space because they are vital to understanding how multicultural social relations are enacted and lived.
Informed by the recent postcolonial turn in urban studies that calls for a decentralisation of urban theory (Robinson 2006) and embracing a comparative case study approach (Robinson 2016), this seminar series will bring together academics, early career researchers and practitioners in thinking and learning about mixed-methods research practices (Bennett and De Sabbata 2023) for understanding and describing heterogeneous formations of multiculture across different local contexts: Leicester (UK), Prato (Italy) and Antwerp (Belgium). We aim to explore how a range of diverse historical and material processes have led Leicester, Prato and Antwerp to variously develop the status of “the multicultural” city in their respective countries. We will explore what “multicultural” means in the three different contexts, using geo-spatial, geo-political and cultural lenses to interrogate processes taking place.
The seminar series is structured into four events. This is the third of three online workshops aimed at exploring collaborative research methods. We will then conclude the seminar series with an in-person, three-day event, including training and workshops to bring together these three different methodological approaches and apply them to develop a mixed-method project.
Collaborative methods
This third online workshop will focus on collaborative ethnographies. Together, we will explore different models of doing collaborative ethnography. How can academic and nonacademic participants collaborate to narrate how particular conditions of multiculturalism are lived and experienced together, investigate or affect state practices to regulate and control super-diverse societies, or strengthen subaltern activism and empowerment? The workshop will discuss the methodological and ethical benefits and challenges of such an approach in different steps of the research process, from data collection to research outputs.
To do so, we will structure the workshop into three interactive parts: a photovoice session, a walk-along-interview and a collaborative analysis. Participants are invited to actively participate in all three sessions, to think and reflect together, to build on each other’s thoughts, and question each other’s ideas.
Schedule
| 10:00 - 10:30 | Welcome and Introduction to the seminar series, Maarten Loopsman |
| Round of introductions | |
| 10:30 - 11:30 | Photovoice |
| How do we experience multiculturalism in our living environment? Take a picture that expresses multiculturalism in the place you want to talk about. | |
| 11:45 - 13:00 | Virtual walking interview |
| Division in breakout rooms: each group ‘interviews’ one participant who walks through an area. Virtual visit of a neighbourhood : participants ask questions along the walk keeping in mind the themes of the photovoice. | |
| 14:00 - 15:15 | Collaborative analysis |
| Per group, analyze collectively some material (interview section, newspaper, policy document,…) | |
| 15:30 - 16:30 | Discussion and wrap-up |
Materials
Where possible, we have made the information and materials related to this seminar series available through our OSF repo.
Acknowledgments
This workshop is supported by a Seminar Series Award from the Urban Studies Foundation, grant reference: USF-SSA-230312.
