SEMINARS - Rachel Pain and Peter Hopkins - Centre for Cultural Research, UWS (26 June 2008)

Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney invites all to attend the CCR Seminar Series 2008 featuring

Dr Rachel Pain (University of Durham, UK)
and
Dr Peter Hopkins (University of Newcastle, UK)

Date: Thursday, 26 June
Time: 2.00pm – 4.30pm
Venue: Gallery Floor, Female Orphan School (Building EZ), Parramatta Campus

Afternoon tea and cakes provided

RSVP: Jacqui Kingi j.kingi@uws.edu.au or 9685 9600

Apologies: Kay Anderson k.anderson@uws.edu.au

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Contact Zones and Transformatory Moments: Young Refugees, Interaction and Participatory Art

Rachel Pain

This paper reflects on a participatory art project with young people of black African and white British heritage in north east England. The project involved young people working with art to explore their emotional landscapes, and to develop and analyse new research themes. As well as providing ground-up knowledge production and policy outcomes, the project began to foster interactions between groups of young people who lived close by but had rarely spoken to each other. The narrative focuses on key moments in the facilitation of these interactions. I discuss the importance of the materiality of art (the tools) within participatory practices (the doing of it) in contributing to a space where interactions might take place, emphasising a complex interplay across/between actors, materials and space that frames encounters as emergent, transitory, fragile and hopeful. As such, I address the knotty potential for the movement of these new interactions to times and spaces beyond the immediate participatory arena. The analysis thus allows us to interrogate more closely how participation may (and may not) occur; casts light on theorising ‘real’ issues regarding ‘community cohesion’ in everyday lives; and in turn can make a contribution to policy in this area.

Dr Rachel Pain is a social geographer with research interests in fear, violence and community safety; social exclusion and health; gender, youth, old age and intergenerational relations; and qualitative and participatory action research approaches. Her current research involves analysing fear as a metanarrative in the war on terror, and she is currently conducting a participatory action research project with Muslim and white young people, the loose aims of which are to connect ideas about fear and global relations with grounded accounts of the insecurities arising from local contexts and identities in everyday life.

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Ethical issues in research with asylum-seeking and refugee children and young people

Peter Hopkins

This paper offers reflections on some of the ethical and methodological issues involved in doing research with asylum-seeking and refugee children and young people. Focusing upon issues of ethical approval and research design, access and obtaining informed consent, privacy and confidentiality and finally dissemination, I demonstrate the ways in which conducting ethical research is often context dependant and varies according to the particular situation, needs and experiences of the children and young people involved. As such, although there are issues that are key to the conduct of ethical research (e.g. minimisation of harm), other issues are more malleable and flexible.

Dr Peter Hopkins’ research interests centre upon critical social geographies, although they also connect with debates within urban, cultural and political geographies. More specifically, he is interested in theoretical and empirical work about: social identities; youth cultures; racism and society; immigration and asylum; and the geographies of religion. His current research includes a focus on youth, religion and identity, including projects with young Sikh men in Scotland and exploring contemporary meanings of religion amongst Scottish Christian youth.

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