Critical Listening

Critical Listening is a methodological tool we hope will open up a space for reflective conversation across multiple events. The practice of Critical Listening identifies and develops key questions, critiques, and concerns and provides a way to reflexively link those reflections into future projects and discussions. If you would like to be a Critical Listener for a specific event please notify the Event Host or Center Manager.

The role of the Critical Listener is to pay particular attention to the conversations that take place at an event, focusing especially on aspects that may go unreported in a typical transcription. The Critical Listener will ask questions such as:

  • What is the process? Who chose the topic? Why? Who was invited? Who is actually present? How could the event be more inclusive? How could it be moderated differently?

  • What is talked about? Which topics are being discussed? Whose concerns are addressed by the participants? What are the silences, the gaps, the unexplained ideas and the taken for granted concepts?

  • What are the responses? What are the "highlights" of the conversation? The “low points”? Which comments go unaddressed? Why? Which comments illicit laughter or provoke other kinds of responses?

  • How are these new formations assembled? Who has a voice in the decision making process? Who benefits and why?

Having established a detailed record of the event, the Critical Listener(s) will then meet with the Event Host and the official event rapporteur (if enlisting multiple Critical Listeners, and if the official rapporteur is different than the Event Host), to create a record of both the event itself and the ideas we collectively hope to take away from the event to consider incorporating into future work. At this point, the Critical Listener with the event participants and organizers might incorporate other orienting questions, such as: What values and assumptions undergird the questions, fears or anxieties being articulated? What other actors are implicated in discussions but not present? Which questions do we want to move forward on? What would be the central questions at the heart of those discussions? How would the processes need to change to make this happen?

The record of the event will continue the conversation that began at the event through analysis, reflection and critique. The final step in Critical Listening is to write a recommendation for the next event, including what the topic should be, who should be a part of the conversation, and how the process could better facilitate the conversation. Ultimately, the efforts will culminate in a Rapporteur Report that will be publicly available through the Center’s website on the event announcement and distributed on social media.

The Center will review the rapporteur report and take its considerations when selecting and planning future events, research projects, or publications. If you are considering writing a collaborative report, please refer to the CLEAR Lab’s (an innovative feminist, anti-colonial marine laboratory) guidance in determining author order.

Examples:

Ferryman: “Fairness in Precision Medicine”

Browe/Medina: "Research Justice 101: Tools for Feminist Science"

Ballinger/Hare: "De-Extinction: Building Future Worlds with Extinct Organisms?"

A Critical Listening Handout to provide to students.