From April - November 2023, the Public Humanities Hub co-hosted with University of Victoria a webinar series on Ethics of Trauma-informed Research featuring various scholars and professionals working in the realm of trauma. This event was organized as part of the Survivor-Centred Visual Narratives Project. The speakers’ experiences ranged from researcher to journalist in conversation with moderators. In this toolkit, experts use terminology such as: survivor-centered approach, people-centered approaches, grassroots approaches, participatory research, and co-produced research. However, the central focus remains the same: overcoming the “trust” gap between community and researchers and approaching the research with an ethics of care.
This toolkit builds on the advice and resources shared by experts in a webinar series on trauma-informed research and practice. It introduces four thematic clusters with methods of trauma-informed research and further points to resources available at UBC and beyond.
Trauma is difficult to define because it is so expansive–it’s intergenerational, historical, personal, and cultural–and it manifests across scales from the individual to the masses. It can also only be understood contextually and in tandem with the individuals and communities participating in the research project (including subjects, researchers, and collaborators)*. When done respectfully and thoughtfully, trauma-informed research has the potential to destabilize existing power structures, recenter the individual/community in formulating critical research questions or in advancing their own narratives, and create conditions for co-designed research strategies.
*Note: In this toolkit we will use the term participants and/or subjects interchangeably for consistency. However, note that the researchers and journalists represented here do not always use the same terms to describe themselves, their participants and/ or subjects. You may see other terms like survivors, victims, perpetrators or collaborators to describe the parties involved in the work represented in this toolkit. Particularly with quoted material, we have retained the language used by the speaker.
Moderators:
Andrea Webb, Associate Professor of Teaching, Dept. of Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of British Columbia
Matt Huculak, Head, Advanced Research Services, University of Victoria
"Participatory Action Research"
Tim Cole, Professor of Social History at the University of Bristol
"Learning Together in a Good Way: Ethical Relationality and Indigenous Storywork"
Shannon Leddy (Métis), Associate Professor of Teaching at UBC and Co-Chair of the Institute for Environmental Learning
"Trauma, Storytelling and Respect: A Journalist’s Perspective"
Ester Enkin, journalist and Vice-President of the Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma
Anthony Feinstein, professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto
Kathy Gannon, journalist and former Associated Press news director for Pakistan and Afghanistan
Duncan McCue (Anishinaabe), journalist and Associate Professor of Indigenous Journalism and (Story)telling at Carelton University
"The Ethics of Oral History Research in Genocide-affected Contexts"
Erin Jessee, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Glasgow
"Using Research-based Theatre with Post-traumatic Stress Survivors"
George Belliveau, Professor of Theatre Education at UBC & Christina Cook, therapist and theatre creator
"Oral History in the Shadow of the International Criminal Court"
Kjell Anderson, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Manitoba
Brigstow Institute, https://www.bristol.ac.uk/brigstow/
McDermont, Morag, Tim Cole, Janet Newman, and Angela Piccini. Imagining Regulation Differently: Co-Creating for Engagement. Bristol: Policy Press, 2020.
University of Bristol. “Brigstow Institute.” Accessed 25 March 2024. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvvsqcb1?saml_data=eyJzYW1sVG9rZW4iOiI1YjdlNGJlZi0zMTFmLTQwNGYtYjU1ZC0zMWM4MGYzMTliYzkiLCJpbnN0aXR1dGlvbklkcyI6WyIxMjJiMTFjOS00YWE5LTQzY2UtYWQzZS0xMmUyYTE4YmU3ZWUiXX0%20%20https://www.bristol.ac.uk/brigstow/
Bristol University Press: Digital. “Series: Connected Communities.” Accessed 25 March 2024. https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/collection/CC?submittedFilterId=by-type&pageSize=10&sort=datedescending&type_2=book
Cole, Tim. Holocaust city: The making of a Jewish ghetto. Routledge, 2013. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203951255/holocaust-city-tim-cole
Negotiating Genocide in Rwanda: The Politics of History by Erin Jessee, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-45195-4
Reseearching Perpetrators of Genocide (eds. Kjell Anderson and Erin Jessee), https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/5833.htm
Community-University Research Alliances, https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/programs-programmes/cura-aruc-eng.aspx
Holocaust survivor Primo Levi, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Primo-Levi
Rwandan scholar/activist of oral traditions Alexis Kagame, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexis-Kagame
Complex Political Victims by Erica Boris, https://www.rienner.com/title/Complex_Political_Victims
“Complex Political Perpetrators : Reflections on Dominic Ongwen” by Erin Baines, https://www.jstor.org/stable/30224939
Teaching where you are: weaving Indigenous and slow principles and pedagogies, Shannon Leddy and Lorrie Miller, 2023, https://go.exlibris.link/KzbzpFKd
Linda Smith, Maori researcher, https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/decolonizing-methodologies-9781786998125/
Dr. Rita Irwin on arts and education, https://edcp.educ.ubc.ca/rita-irwin/
Belliveau, George and Graham W. Lea (eds). Contact!Unload: Military Veterans, Trauma, and Research-Based Theatre, UBC Press, 2020. https://www.ubcpress.ca/contactunload
UBC Research-based Theatre Cluster: https://rbtlab.ubc.ca/
Kathy Gannon, “Journalism, Maybe,” https://shorensteincenter.org/journalism-maybe/
Watters, Ethan. Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Crazy-Like-Us/Ethan-Watters/9781416587095
Trauma Reporting, https://www.traumareporting.com/
Cherry, Tamara. The Trauma Beat: A Case for Re-Thinking the Business of Bad News, https://ecwpress.com/products/the-trauma-beat
Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma, https://www.journalismforum.ca/
Anderson, Kjell. Perpetrating Genocide: A Criminological Account, https://www.routledge.com/Perpetrating-Genocide-A-Criminological-Account/Anderson/p/book/9780367194826
Anderson, Kjell and Erin Jessee (eds.). Researching Perpetrators of Genocide, https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/5833.htm