Part I - Justice as Care-full Encounter

Summary

The three chapters in this section, written by Kate Derickson, Elizabeth Mavroudi and Barbora Adlerova and Ana Moragues Faus, reflect on, and reject, the relations of power that govern the extractive and directive neoliberal model of ‘community- engaged’ research that continues to hold sway within the academy. Instead, they focus on the ‘more than research’ nature of academic investigations, and offer frank and telling insights into the messy, contradictory and sometimes uncomfortable encounters that have shaped their research practices, relations and spaces. They call for the centring of participant voice, not just in project outcomes but throughout the everyday doing of a project, and reflect on the challenges that this can bring especially in terms of tensions between different priorities and expectations.

Justice here is grounded in the encounter, in the processes of care we should enact for our participants, colleagues and selves. These support us in negotiating the innate stresses and stressors within a project, and the academy more broadly, and remind us that words and actions matter at all points and scales. To do just research, we therefore need to practice and be enveloped within a compassionate culture of care.