Facilitating Participant Dialogues in Research, Pulsating Practices: Constructionism in Action, Taos Institute, NM, USA, (Webinar), 8 October 2025, 10-11:30 EDT.
With Norma Romm (University of South Africa) and Francis Akena Adyanga (Kabale University, Uganda).
The Taos Institute invites you to join this webinar where Norma and Francis showcase how, as professional researchers, they have worked alongside research participants with the intent that fruitful constructions can be dialogically generated via the research process. The examples will indicate how research participants can participate in reconstructing ways of living together in relation to their expressed concerns.
The research setting that will constitute the prime example in this webinar was Francis and Norma’s effort to intervene in peace-building between farmers and pastoralists in the context of land disputes in Northern Uganda. Through focus group facilitation, participants came to discuss new options for their co-existence and were appreciative of how the research process contributed to this.
The webinar will also refer to another example in Northern Uganda where participants in a community were distressed by the practices of certain foreign-owned companies and mobilized resistance. As part of their dialoguing around their (relatively successful) efforts, they offered re-constructions of the notion of “development”. Finally, Francis and Norma will point to research in South Africa exploring Indigenous practices for advocating food sovereignty (as a counterpoint to globally dominant narratives around “food security”).
The webinar will invite audiences to reflect upon (and discuss) their roles as professional or lay researchers in shaping social and ecological life.
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 