A successful online PhD course on the method Photovoice
The past month Y-ENGAGE facilitated a tailored PhD course intended to support our PhD students in aligning their Photovoice study designs with their particular research objectives. Photovoice is a tool for social science knowledge production and an instigator of critical reflection, engagement, collaboration, and change amongst participants. In short, the method can enable our many young participants to capture on camera their relationship with climate change. Through their photographs and associated stories, they can voice their understandings, learn together, and call for action regarding the issues of global warming.
The course included sessions focusing on 1) how to use Photovoice to study climate change, 2) Implementation and process of Photovoice, 3) Ethical perspectives in Photovoice studies, and 4) Peer-researchers and youth participants. Throughout the sessions, the PhD students refined sketches of how to use Photovoice. In the last session, the PhD students presented these sketches to our young peer-researchers. This resulted in a stronger relationship between PhD students and peer-researchers. It sparked great discussions on roles and distribution of control in researching climate change and young people. Peer researchers themselves articulated their role as being the bridges between research objectives and local cultural realities. Another tangible outcome of these discussions was a widespread agreement that each PhD study should soon conduct a pilot where the PhD student, peer-researchers, and selected young participants iterate on their methodological designs. Furthermore, such a pilot will help all achieve mutual experience, detect needs of further training, and uncover ethical and practical issues concerning the use of the method locally.
We feel very fortunate to experience the passionate engagement and teamwork between PhD students and peer-researchers during the course!