collectivx

As a collective, we weave knowledge and connect academic and personal threads into our research. We have been inspired by the idea of a polyvocal approach to research (Samaras & Pithouse-Morgan, 2020) in which various voices are made visible as dialogic encounters from diverse ways of knowing and experiencing the world, especially among researchers and educators. Our approach becomes a narrative mode of a plurality of interdependent voices and consciousnesses who support each other during the global pandemic and beyond. 

We have been inspired by decolonial, Indigenous and critical scholars (Denzin et al., 2008; Paris & Winn, 2014; Smith, 1999; Wilson, 2008; Yunkaporta, 2020) in a reflective assessment of our researcher and teacher identities. We began deconstructing our experiences in terms of language during various personal and professional conversations by “quilting our knowledge” while supporting each other emotionally through the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

​Members

Mela Sarkar – McGill University

Beatrice Cale – McGill University

Mama Adobea Nii Owoo – University of Toronto

April Passi – McGill University

John Wayne dela Cruz – McGill University 

Yecid Ortega – Queen’s University Belfast

Our group started during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. As users of social media, we were all avid users of Twitter. This group formed in 2021 when Natalia tweeted an image of her newly brought books. It led to a conversation between Natalia and Melanie about forming a book club to read one of them -- Creative Writing for Social Research: A Practical Guide --- written by Dr. Helen Kara (2021).

Arte in Spanish means art, but beyond that it means a craft, something that requires a skill, a method, cleverness, and overall passion. This idea, coupled with Artemis, the Greek goddess of hunt and strength, inspired the name of our collective as it means excitement and creativity in research. Artem, focuses on research that centres the will to use arts and creativity into the process to promote healthier, safer spaces with/for strong and resilient communities of research practice.

Our purpose is to stimulate empirical work that utilises arts-based research, creativity and collaboration to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable communities in society. Our collective demonstrates that creative methods can transcend the boundaries of disciplines and within disciplines. As a group, we seek to develop holistic perspectives by integrating different theoretical and empirical disciplinary perspectives, thereby creating new frameworks to understand problems for the purposes of developing solutions for a more just world.

Members

Natalia Balyasnikova – York University

Meghan Kumar – London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Melanie M. Wong – University of British Columbia

Yecid Ortega – Queen’s University Belfast