ETMU 2026

Trust in Researcher-Activist-Artist Collaboration

Session conveners: Research fellow Camilla Marucco Al-Mimar, Migration Institute of Finland,
camilla.marucco@migrationinstitute.fi
Associate Professor Leonardo Custódio, Malmö University, Sweden
leonardo.custodio@mau.se

Session description

Trust is a fundamental component for sustainable relationships between academic and non-academic partners in activist research. That is, scientifically rigorous research committed to human rights and social justice (Hale, 2018). With that in mind, this workshop contributes to debates about trust and the quality of collaborative practices among multisector partners in and out of academia (Bradford and Dutta, 2018; Jeppesen and Sartoretto, 2020; Macduff and Netting, 2000; McGiffin, 2021; Spišák, 2024). In practice, this workshop by the Activist Research Network (ARN) welcomes politically engaged scholars to share their methodological and practical experiences in building trust and sustainable relationships in and through collaboration with activists, civil society practitioners and artists in research and teaching.

We treat this workshop as a respectful and empowering space for sharing experiences, insights and methodological strategies across disciplines and career stages. Some of the guiding questions that we expect presenters to address in this workshop are:

  • What does an activist research design that prioritizes the building of trust between scholars, activists, practitioners and/or artists look like?
  • How has trust in collaborative processes between researchers, practitioners and/or artists been theorized in academic literature?
  • What does “sustainable” in sustainable relationships between researchers, activists, practitioners and/or artists mean in practice?
  • What are effective methods for researchers, activists, practitioners and/or artists to build sustainable relationships in and through collaboration?
  • What are the challenges to build sustainable collaborative relationships? How to overcome these challenges?
  • What are (emotionally, ethically, materially) sustainable ways of doing activism
    or activist research?
  • What can go wrong (or has gone wrong) in efforts to build sustainable collaboration in activist research? How to prevent or fix problems in this kind of research?

In this workshop, we want to explore non-traditional forms of knowledge-sharing interactions. In addition to traditional conference presentations, we invite creative explorations in storytelling (e.g. poetry, literary prose, TED-talk-like narratives, recitations, performances, musical and audiovisual resources, etc.) and group activities.

The primary language for this workshop is English. We acknowledge that there is a problem concerning the hegemonic character of the English language in international academic work (Suzina, 2021). However, in the Finnish (and broadly Nordic) context, English still serves as a language that facilitates the interaction of international scholars with local academic communities. Possible contributions in other languages can be considered, if the proponent can provide some form of translation into English, too.

Camilla Marucco Al-Mimar and Leonardo Custódio are coordinators of the Activist Research Network in Finland. For further information, visit https://mailman.abo.fi/mailman/listinfo/activist-research-network