Research

Interests

  • My research explores the relationship between personal and social change from a social psychological perspective.  I am interested in how people’s identities, activities, and commitments change as they  explore forgotten social alternatives  such as nonviolence, post-prison college,  youth inclusion,  and more.
  • I strive for research practices and products that are  rigorous, collectively owned, and relevant to the work of scholars, educators,  advocates, and practitioners. To this end, I apply the principles of critical participatory action research and of the structural dynamic method. I specialize in qualitative research, using digital media, as well as narrative and visual methods.

Projects 

*  Memoscopio and Dissertation

  • I am a co-founder of the Memoscopio Project, which combines social research, digital media, and the arts to document, study, and promote nonviolence as an experience and methodology action. Memoscopio’s first project was a study of  the World March, an international initiave that promoted alternatives to militarism and war through social media, events in 600 cities, and a three-month journey around the world. More.
  • My dissertation draws from the Memoscopio Project and studies the relationship between protest, emotion, and creativity in the process of peacebuilding and the relase of imagination.  The work combines fieldwork in the United States and six South American countries, written and video-taped accounts by 191 participants, and official documentation of the World March.

*  Occupar

  • Starting the Fall of 2011 I have been part of the Occupar research team. Occupar is a participatory action research project exploring barriers and opportunities for student political engagement at CUNY. The research team brings together  graduate and undergraduate students from the Graduate Center, Hunter College and John Jay College. The project is sponsored by the Public Science Project at the CUNY Graduate Center.

*  Rebuilding Communities  and M.A. Research

  • In 2009 I served as a research associate for a Ford Foundation project titled “Rebuilding urban communities and families through higher education: The economic, educational and civic impact of post-prison college on adults and their children.” Rebuilding Communities was a multi-method study of the personal, family, community, and institutional implications of post-prison college. The RCP participatory  team  brought researchers, practitioners, former inmates, and their families to carry out a case study of the College Initiative (CI), a post-prison college program located within the City University of New York that works to “rebuild lives, families and communities through higher education.”
  • My work with the children of formerly incarcerated students was the basis of my Masters thesis “In research of critical knowledge: Tracing inheritance in the landscape of incarceration.”
  • Among other products, the project led to a youth produced video, featured below.

 

 

 

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