Publications by Pamela Lamb, PhD
Disrupting Shameful Legacies: Girls and Young Women Speak Back Through the Arts to Address Sexual Violence, 2018
Agenda, 2020
This reflexive analysis explores feelings evoked at a participatory video screening intended to p... more This reflexive analysis explores feelings evoked at a participatory video screening intended to provoke policy dialogue around the health and wellbeing of Indigenous youth. The Taking Action! Project engaged Indigenous youth, as health promotion activists, in participatory filmmaking to address HIV in their communities. The filmmakers employed creative strategies of ‘speaking back’ to policymakers and the policy processes from which they are typically excluded. I explore the role of affective learning in participatory visual research, and its impact in the policy process. A feminist approach to affect theory is vital to this work concerned with women and girls’ emotional lives and labours. For instance, it may reveal how Indigenous youth and non-Indigenous policymakers may have similar feelings about colonial legacies but may have very different relationships to those feelings. Regarding settler-Indigenous contexts globally, I argue that policy processes require affective attunement to colonial legacies, and to the ways in which policies affect Indigenous peoples’ everyday lives. This can have unexpected outcomes, such as revealing what Sarah Ahmed calls “the secret places of pain”. Painful feelings matter: they both fuel and frustrate action. Participatory visual methods can build bridges for difficult feelings, creating the grounds for both flourishing and friction.
Educational Research for Social Change, 2017
The 35th conference of the International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA) on Framing/Reframing... more The 35th conference of the International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA) on Framing/Reframing: Visual Sociology, Goffman & the Everyday was held at Concordia University, in Montreal, Canada in June 2017. The yearly conference attracted delegates from 31 countries (with a high representation from Africa, especially South Africa), and from a wide range of disciplines—sociology, anthropology, education, communication, fine arts, and journalism to name few. Inspired by Erving Goffman's notion of strategic interaction and the ways in which marginalised communities are taking action in everyday life, the panellists explored various visual methodologies that are framing social change.
International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2018
There is increasing scholarly attention to the creative ways in which young people are engaging i... more There is increasing scholarly attention to the creative ways in which young people are engaging in policy dialogue. Yet what other ways may we study the impact of youth-produced images on audiences? Here, we explore the role that visual researchers occupy as audiences to youth-led participatory visual work addressing critical issues. Drawing on qualitative research approaches in autoethnography, we use a methodology of researcher reflexivity to invite visual researchers through semistructured interviews to position themselves with respect to youth-produced images of sexual violence, refugee experience, and colonial trauma. In shifting our attention from studying the privileged position of researchers with respect to facilitating participatory visual research, we learn about the researcher's privileged perspective on how other audiences may view the work, such as policy makers and community and family members. This study highlights some ethical and methodological considerations of facilitating dialogue between youth and various stakeholders on the critical issues impacting the lives of young people.
Global Education Review, 2020
Many challenges exist to conducting participatory research and consultation with young people, es... more Many challenges exist to conducting participatory research and consultation with young people, especially with those considered vulnerable or at risk. Beyond respecting the safety and wellbeing of young research participants, researchers must be aware of barriers to youth engagement and be attuned to the many forms of youth resistance. As young people are seeking more control over their lives, traditional knowledge hierarchies between adults and youth are shifting. In July 2018, an event entitled Circles Within Circles brought together Indigenous and non-Indigenous girls and young women from South Africa, Canada, Russia, Sweden, and Kenya to learn from each other's participatory art-making and create a network for challenging gender-based violence (GBV). This article provides insight into the often-invisible experience of the "supporting cast" in events like Circles Within Circles. The co-authors are doctoral and postdoctoral researchers who contributed to organization and acted as facilitators, notetakers, and participants. The co-authors conduct participatory analyses of journal entries they wrote throughout the event, and jointly reflect on the activities and their feelings about their roles. Reflecting, for example, on gut feelings about young participants' use of voice and silence during adult-led activities, the co-authors discuss their reading of girls' demonstrations of resistance. This embodied knowledge, further cultivated by attuning to shared experience, is explored in this collaborative auto-ethnography. Examining the complexities of this cross-cultural and intergenerational event, the co-authors contend that when supporting girls and young people subverting dominant narratives of GBV, researchers' embodied reflexivity is crucial for positively contributing to girl-led change.
Papers by Pamela Lamb, PhD
Educational research for social change, Sep 1, 2017
The 35th conference of the International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA) on Framing/Reframing... more The 35th conference of the International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA) on Framing/Reframing: Visual Sociology, Goffman & the Everyday was held at Concordia University, in Montreal, Canada in June 2017. The yearly conference attracted delegates from 31 countries (with a high representation from Africa, especially South Africa), and from a wide range of disciplines—sociology, anthropology, education, communication, fine arts, and journalism to name few. Inspired by Erving Goffman's notion of strategic interaction and the ways in which marginalised communities are taking action in everyday life, the panellists explored various visual methodologies that are framing social change.
Agenda, 2020
abstract This reflexive analysis explores feelings evoked at a participatory video screening inte... more abstract This reflexive analysis explores feelings evoked at a participatory video screening intended to provoke policy dialogue around the health and wellbeing of Indigenous youth. The Taking Action! Project engaged Indigenous youth, as health promotion activists, in participatory filmmaking to address HIV in their communities. The filmmakers employed creative strategies of ‘speaking back’ to policymakers and the policy processes from which they are typically excluded. I explore the role of affective learning in participatory visual research, and its impact in the policy process. A feminist approach to affect theory is vital to this work concerned with women and girls’ emotional lives and labours. For instance, it may reveal how Indigenous youth and non-Indigenous policymakers may have similar feelings about colonial legacies but may have very different relationships to those feelings. Regarding settler-Indigenous contexts globally, I argue that policy processes require affective attunement to colonial legacies, and to the ways in which policies affect Indigenous peoples’ everyday lives. This can have unexpected outcomes, such as revealing what Sarah Ahmed calls “the secret places of pain”. Painful feelings matter: they both fuel and frustrate action. Participatory visual methods can build bridges for difficult feelings, creating the grounds for both flourishing and friction.
Disrupting Shameful Legacies, 2018
International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2018
There is increasing scholarly attention to the creative ways in which young people are engaging i... more There is increasing scholarly attention to the creative ways in which young people are engaging in policy dialogue. Yet what other ways may we study the impact of youth-produced images on audiences? Here, we explore the role that visual researchers occupy as audiences to youth-led participatory visual work addressing critical issues. Drawing on qualitative research approaches in autoethnography, we use a methodology of researcher reflexivity to invite visual researchers through semistructured interviews to position themselves with respect to youth-produced images of sexual violence, refugee experience, and colonial trauma. In shifting our attention from studying the privileged position of researchers with respect to facilitating participatory visual research, we learn about the researcher’s privileged perspective on how other audiences may view the work, such as policy makers and community and family members. This study highlights some ethical and methodological considerations of fa...
Global education review, 2020
Many challenges exist to conducting participatory research and consultation with young people, es... more Many challenges exist to conducting participatory research and consultation with young people, especially with those considered vulnerable or at risk. Beyond respecting the safety and wellbeing of young research participants, researchers must be aware of barriers to youth engagement and be attuned to the many forms of youth resistance. As young people are seeking more control over their lives, traditional knowledge hierarchies between adults and youth are shifting. In July 2018, an event entitled Circles Within Circles brought together Indigenous and non-Indigenous girls and young women from South Africa, Canada, Russia, Sweden, and Kenya to learn from each other’s participatory art-making and create a network for challenging gender-based violence (GBV). This article provides insight into the ofteninvisible experience of the “supporting cast” in events like Circles Within Circles. The co-authors are doctoral and postdoctoral researchers who contributed to organization and acted as f...
Girlhood Studies, 2017
Effectively engaging with technologies of nonviolence for girls and young women requires attentio... more Effectively engaging with technologies of nonviolence for girls and young women requires attention to systemic, symbolic, and everyday forms of violence online and offline, as well as to how power is broadly manifest. We draw from three different interdisciplinary perspectives and critical reflections to consider networked technologies and online communities in relation to nonviolence. We explore mentorship and subversive education through novel, The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, identity politics on Facebook in a reflective study of digital citizenship for queer girl visibility, and online grassroots community solutions in considering the social potential of online forums and solutions for online harassment. Our varied perspectives encounter contradictions, such as the need for access to and protection from diverse online communities, as a necessary consideration for developing policy and creating networked and community-based technologies of nonviolence. We conclude with five recommendations in a call to action.
Books by Pamela Lamb, PhD
Disrupting Shameful Legacies: Girls and women speak back through the arts to address sexual violence, 2018
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Publications by Pamela Lamb, PhD
Papers by Pamela Lamb, PhD
Books by Pamela Lamb, PhD