Since 2010, I have worked on a wide range of community-based projects with diverse migrant groups in both rural and urban areas across South Africa. These projects have explored multiple aspects of migration, gender, and sexuality, as well as the po...More
Since 2010, I have worked on a wide range of community-based projects with diverse migrant groups in both rural and urban areas across South Africa. These projects have explored multiple aspects of migration, gender, and sexuality, as well as the politics of knowledge more broadly. My doctoral research (completed in 2018) used various participatory arts-based methodologies (e.g. photo voice, storyboarding, narrative journaling, multi-media collaging, and image-elicitation interviews) to explore the subjective lived experiences of internal and cross-border migrant women, men, and transgender persons involved in sex work in two South African provinces and the ways less traditional research approaches might be used to generate more respectful research, engagement, and dissemination with rather than on migrants in the sex industry. I am particularly intersted in exploring the ways research can (or not) support social justice initiatives and what migrant's "everyday" experiences can teach us about governence, policy and development, including notions of belonging, agency, and resistance. My work is inter-and trans-discplinary, and as such uses various practical and theoritical frameworks. Because it seeks to build strong links between knowledge production and societal transformation, my work can be broadly situated within the realm of feminists' theories and activism, in that that I am interested in exploring collaborative forms of knowledge production and the social, cultura, and political processes that shape and influence migrants "everyday" experiences. My work draws heavily on Freirian ideas of critical consciousness, feminist standpoint theory, intersectionality, "borderlands", and assemblage, but at the same time, seeks to interrogate the analytical frameworks I use in my work with migrants in South Africa. My research also aims to contribute to epistemological debates on what constitutes "legitimate" knowledge and to critical discussions on the use of participatory arts-based methods with marginalised population groups. As the co-founder and co-coordinator of the MoVE project at the African Centre for Migration and Society, Johannesburg, South Africa, I work collaboratively with other researches in the conceptualisation, implementation, and facilitation of workshops, including the development of free downloadable Ebooks about the projects and issues under investigation. The participant generated artefacts produced during these partnerships have expanded research engagement beyond the academia, raising awarness of pressing issues, needs, and concerns voices by those whose lifeworlds are under investigation.
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