About the Public Science ProjectParticipatory Action Research As Public Science -- We believe social science can play an important role in the struggle for social justice. Participatory Action Research (PAR) provides a critical framework for making science – systematic inquiry and analysis – a public enterprise. Allied with feminist, critical race, and indigenous theory, PAR is an approach to research that values the significant knowledge people hold about their lives and experiences. PAR positions those most intimately impacted by research as leaders in shaping research questions, framing interpretations, and designing meaningful research products and actions. With these commitments, The Public Science Project collaborates with academics, community organizations, schools, prisons, and public institutions to design, conduct, and support research and practice aimed at interrupting injustice.Past projects include: • studying privilege and constructions of “merit” in racially integrated suburban schools. • investigating the subjectivities and hetero-normative violence of white elite masculinity within exclusive private all-boys schools (see Brett Stoudt); • documenting the material and psychological consequences of opportunity gaps in wealthy desegregated schools (Echoes of Brown: Youth Documenting and Performing the Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education); • developing school-based internships in which students in small progressive public schools investigate finance inequity and college access (see Janice Bloom and Lori Chajet) • collaborating with mothers and youth in varied communities of the Bronx organizing for educational justice (see Family-to-Family: The Guide to the Schools of Hope http://www.lehman.edu/deanedu/thebronxinstitute/Media_And_Publications/ENLACE_Family-to-Family_Guide.pdf) • mobilizing with youth pushed out of their high schools, researching the politics of the GED, the subjectivities of educational desire and meritocracy (see Eve Tuck, this website) • facilitating research as queer youth document the sexuality climates and hetero-normativity in schools and beyond (see Darla Linville, this website) • researching, in a longitudinal design, with urban youth, educators and parents in the midst of school restructuring (see Anne Galletta and Jennifer Ayala, this website) • developing, with urban youth who are the beneficiaries of the Abbott v. Burke finance equity lawsuit, research projects to document the persistent inequities in their schools and communities and the power and possibilities of state-funded secondary reform (see Jennifer Ayala, Tia Burns, Stan Karp, Yasser Payne)Public Science ProjectPSP_2fb6ea38-a6e1-11ea-8ad2-6dfc2f83ea00María Elena TorreDirector and Co-FounderMichelle FineCo-FounderBrett StoudtAssociate DirectorMadeline FoxAssociate Director of InstitutesPublic Science Project ResearchersResearchers active in current Public Science Projects include:Paul BartleyKimberly BelmonteEvan BissellFawn BracyEmerson BrisbonPricilla BustamanteAllison CabanaCaitlin CahillLoren CahillJennifer ChmielewskiHillary CaldwellSlema DjokovicAnthony DownsMichelle FineMadeline FoxDavid FrostAndrew Cory GreenePrakriti HassanGaurav JashnaniJose LopezEinat ManoffAmanda MatlesCristina OneaAdilka PimentelMelissa RiveraSonia SánchezTalia SandwickNadine SheppardBrett StoudtMaría Elena TorreDarian XJacqueline YatesDiane YoongSarah Zeller-BerkmanRachel LeibertPublic Science Project Post-Doctoral FellowPublic Science Project CollaboratorsRecent community collaborators include:BreakOUTCenter for Constitutional RightsCommunities United for Police ReformGender Justice LAGirls for Gender EquityH.O.L.L.AMake the Road New YorkNew York Civil Liberties UnionRed Hook InitiativeStreetwise and SafeTucson Youth Poetry SlamThe Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY)A Brief History of the Public Science Project -- The Public Science Project has grown out of more than a decade’s worth of participatory action research (PAR) at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY).The PAR CollectiveFirst organized The PAR Collective, we began our work as a coalition of activists, researchers, youth, elders, lawyers, prisoners, and educators, launching projects on educational injustice, lives under surveillance, and the collateral damage of mass incarceration.SchoolsMost of our projects have been situated in schools and/or community-based organizations struggling for quality education, economic opportunities, and human rights.Community-Based OrganizationsKnowledge-Sharing Research CampsKnowledge-sharing research camps set the stage for most of our research, designed to bring together differently positioned people around a common table to design and implement the research:YouthEducatorsYoung Peoplewho have been pushed out of schoolsMothersorganizing for quality education in communities under siegePrisonersOrganizersAcademicsAdvisory BoardsMost projects have vibrant advisory boards of youth, community elders, educators and/or activists to shape the work and hold us accountable to the needs and desires of local communities.Research CollectivesResearch collectives of young people studying the long arms of Foucault’s Panopticon – the experience of surveillance, stereotyping, commodification and resistance on the streets… We have also designed and supported research collectives of young people studying the long arms of Foucault’s Panopticon – the experience of surveillance, stereotyping, comodification and resistance on the streets for youth, men who lead a street life, young women living on the Lower East Side of New York City and, most recently, for Muslim-American women living in post-9/11 and post-Patriot Act New York City... Some of these projects have been designed for geographic and local depth, while others trace the sprawl of domination and resistance across geography and scale (Cahill, 2004; Fine, Tuck & Zeller Berkman, 2006; Katz, 2004). All of these projects dig deep at the fractures of social ideology and oppression, and the reservoirs of human resilience and collective resistance.Street Life ProjectThe Street Life Project, a systematic historic, quantitative and qualitative analysis of the “streets” as a site of resiliency for young men of African descent (see Yasser Payne, this website)Fed Up HoneysThe Fed Up Honeys, with young women from the Lower East Side of New York ‘fed up’ with the stereotypes that spew across their neighborhoods (see Caitlin Cahill, this site);Corporate Disease Promotion ProjectThe Corporate Disease Promotion project, in which youth from elite and neglected communities document the promotion of disease by corporations selling alcohol, tobacco and low-nutrition foods (see Jessica Ruglis and Nick Freudenberg, this site)Policing Survey“Anything can happen with the police around” is a quantitative survey, produced, disseminated and interpreted by youth researchers, completed by over 900 young people on the streets of New York City, documenting their experience of police surveillance, including sexual harassment by police (see Fine, Freudenberg, Payne, Smith and Waltzer)Hyphen ProjectThe “Weight of the Hyphen” is a study of Muslim-American young women living in post-9/11 and post-”homeland security” New York City and negotiating surveillance by the State, media, community, family and self (see Mayida Zaal, Tahani Salah and Michelle Fine).Incarceration ProjectProjects to document, assess and resist the collateral damage provoked by mass incarceration of people of color and we have designed a series of projects to document, assess and resist the collateral damage provoked by mass incarceration of people of color: in a women’s prison in New York State, documenting the impact of college on women in prison, the prison environment and on the women’s post-release outcomes; (see Fine, Boudin, Bowen, Clark, Hylton, Martinez, Missy, Rivera, Roberts, Smart, Torre and Upegui, 2001; www.changingminds.ws) with the children of women in prison (see Kathy Boudin; see Sarah Zeller-Berkman, this website) with women and men who have served long sentences in prison for violent crimes (see Carla Marquez and the ALUMNI group, this website)YouthParticipatory action research with, by and for youth -- Youth PAR projects typically center around issues of intimate, structural violence: educational justice, access to quality healthcare, the criminalization of youth, gang violence, police brutality, race/gender/sexuality oppression, gentrification and environmental issues. The goals extend from the exposition of local inequities with contextual specificity, to broader coalition-building with similarly situated youth nationally and globally. A methodological stance rooted in the belief that valid knowledge is produced only in collaboration and in action, PAR recognizes that those “studied” harbor critical social knowledge and must be repositioned as subjects and architects of research (Fals-Borda, 1979; Fine & Torre, 2004; Martin-Baro, 1994; Torre, 2005). Based largely on the theory and practice of Latin American activist scholars, PAR scholars draw from neo-Marxist, feminist, queer and critical race theorists (Anzaldua, 1987; Apple, 2001; Crenshaw, 1995; Weis & Fine, 2004; Lykes, 2001; Matsuda, 1995; Williams, 1998) to articulate methods and ethics that have local integrity and stretch topographically to sight/cite global patterns of domination and resistance (Katz,2004). Enabling youth to interrogate and denaturalize the conditions of their everyday oppression inspires a process of community and knowledge building. As Paulo Freire (1982) eloquently argued, “the silenced are not just incidental to the curiosity of the researcher but are the masters of inquiry into the underlying causes of the events in their world. In this context research becomes a means of moving them beyond silence into a quest to proclaim the world.” Repositioning youth as researchers rather than the “researched” shifts the practice of researching “on youth” to “with youth”–a position that stands in sharp contrast to the current neo-liberal constructions of youth as dangerous, disengaged, blind consumers who lack any type of connection. Frustrated, alienated and angry survivors of discrimination mature into active policy critics and agents engaged in conversation, confrontation and reform. Legitimating democratic inquiry within institutions as well as outside, PAR excavates knowledge “at the bottom” and “at the margins” (Matsuda, 1995), and signifies youths’ fundamental right to ask, investigate and contest policies that enforce injustice (see ). With this website we offer up the intimate details of the Participation, the Action and the Research, undertaken in difficult social institutions.The needs and desires of local communities are addressed_2fb6ebfa-a6e1-11ea-8ad2-6dfc2f83ea00To hold us accountable_2fb6ece0-a6e1-11ea-8ad2-6dfc2f83ea00PrinciplesThe following principles and commitments guide our collaborations, in the hope of maximizing participation within our PAR projects. Across our work we agree:KnowledgesTo value knowledges that have been historically marginalized and delegitimized (i.e., youth, prisoner, immigrant) alongside traditionally recognized knowledges (i.e., scholarly).SharingTo share the various knowledges and resources held by individual members of the research collective, across the collective, so members can participate as equally as possible.ParticipationEqualityCollaborationTo collaboratively decide appropriate research questions, design, methods and analysis as well as useful research products.MultiplicityTo create a research space where individuals and the collective can express their multiplicity and use this multiplicity to inform research questions, design and analyses.Risk-TakingTo encourage creative risk-taking in the interest of generating new knowledge (i.e., understanding individuals and the collective to be “under construction” with ideas and opinions that are in formation, expected to grow, etc.).CreativityPowerTo attend theoretically and practically to issues of power and vulnerability within the collective and created by the research. To strategically work the power within the group when necessary to benefit both individual and collective needs/agendasVulnerabilityDisagreementsTo excavate and explore disagreements rather than smooth them over in the interest of consensus (as they often provide insight into larger social/political dynamics that are informing the data).DynamicsInsightInterconnectionTo use a variety of methods to enable interconnected analyses at the individual, social, cultural, and institutional levels.ActionTo conceive of action on multiple levels over the course of the PAR project.ConsequencesTo think through consequences of research and actions.NegotiationTo an ongoing negotiation of conditions of collaboration; Relationshipsbuilding research relationships over-time.ResearchThe Practice of Research -- In each setting, a series of “methods camps”/seminars are launched so that we can learn, together, the local history of struggle and develop a shared critical language of social theory, feminist theory, critical race theory and methodology. Depending on age, immediate struggles, and the nature of the research, we immerse ourselves in the writings and teachings of social psychology, critical race theory, queer scholarship, critical theory, feminist thought and indigenous knowledges, e.g. of Patricia Hill Collins, Fannie Lou Hamer, Paolo Freire, Orlando Fals-Borda, Sandra Harding, Stuart Hall, Ignacio Martin-Baro, Nancy Hartsock, Morton Deutsch, Linda Thuwai Smith and others, and we listen to hip hop, review magazine and policy representations of youth, study civil rights histories and local campaigns. Together, we craft the research questions, challenge each other to assure that varied standpoints are represented in the original framing of the question, work through the specifics of design, data collection, analysis and products ‘of use.’ With varied methods, including both qualitative and quantitative tools of inquiry, an array of differences at the table, a loose-always-fragile democratic spirit holding us, and an eye on action, we raise up significant challenges to existing structural hierarchies that have been naturalized as if inevitable, and we imagine how to interrupt and re-create conditions toward justice (we draw from and are allied with “sister projects” e.g. Anand, Fine, Surrey and Perkins, 2001; Brydon-Miller, 2001; Cahill, 2004; Cammarota & Ginwright, 2002; Chawla, Clanchet-Cohen, Cosco, Driskell, Kruger, Malone, Moore and Percy-Smith, 2005; Fals-Borda, 1984; Fine, Bloom, Burns, Chajet, Guishard, Payne and Torre, 2005; Freire, 1982; Guhathakurta, 2006; Hart, 1997; NLERAP, see also Pedro Pedraza at El Centro, 2002; Ormond, 2004; Rahman, 1985; Smith, 2005). Our methods include: Participatory surveys, participant observation, intercept interviews, photo-voice, focus groups, identity maps, individual interviews, list stories, street surveys, archival and historic reviews, policy analyses, slam books, problem identification webs, “cold calls” to institutions, web-based research, and more. A sampling of our IRB forms is available on this website (which represent only a small sliver of how we conceptualize and practice ethical deliberations).ResearchConduct and support participatory action research._2fb6eda8-a6e1-11ea-8ad2-6dfc2f83ea001The Public Science Project conducts and supports participatory action research with a commitment to the significant knowledge people hold about their lives and experiences and a belief that those most intimately impacted by research should take the lead in shaping research questions, framing interpretations, and designing meaningful products and actions. We collaborate with community organizations, schools, prisons, and public institutions to design research and practice aimed at interrupting justice.QuestionsShape research questions._2fb6ee5c-a6e1-11ea-8ad2-6dfc2f83ea001.1InterpretationsFrame interpretations._040f33de-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea001.2Products & ActionsDesign meaningful products and actions._040f356e-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea001.3JusticeInterrupt justice._040f3690-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea001.4Community OrganizationsSchoolsPrisonsPublic InstitutionsWe collaborate with community organizations, schools, prisons, and public institutions to design research and practice aimed at interrupting justice.Workshops & TrainingsEngage radical participatory pedagogy to redistribute knowledge across communities._040f37bc-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea002The Public Science Project engages a radical participatory pedagogy to redistribute knowledge across communities. We hold workshops, trainings, institutes, and salons on theories, methods, and ethics of PAR._040f38d4-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea00PARProvide training on the history, theory, and ethics of the Participatory Action Research approach._040f3ab4-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea003PAR InstituteCommunity MembersGraduate StudentsAcademicsThe Critical PAR Institute -- An annual 5-day intensive PAR training covering the history, theory, and ethics of the approach, as well as in-depth discussions of participatory methods, conditions for meaningful community collaborations, and examples of effective research designs. The Institute is open to community members, graduate students, and academics. Participants receive a certificate upon completion._040f3bea-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea00WorkshopsConduct workshops._040f3d0c-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea004Methods for the People -- A workshop series open to community members, graduate students, and academics. Featuring modules on: statistics, qualitative data, mapping, photovoice, participatory digital media, collaborative analysis, embodied analyses, participatory ethics.StatisticsConduct workshops on statistics._040f3e2e-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea004.1Qualitative DataConduct workshops on qualitative data._040f404a-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea004.2MappingConduct workshops on mapping._040f4176-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea004.3PhotovoiceConduct workshops on photovoice._040f4298-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea004.4Digital MediaConduct workshops on participatory digital media._040f43ce-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea004.5Collaborative AnalysisConduct workshops on collaborative analysis._040f44f0-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea004.6Embodied AnalysesConduct workshops on embodied analyses._040f4612-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea004.7EthicsConduct workshops on participatory ethics._040f4748-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea004.8Specialized TrainingsProvide custom designed trainings in PAR methodologies and approaches._040f4860-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea005Specialized PAR Trainings -- Custom designed trainings in PAR methodologies and approaches created in collaboration with foundations, community, school and/or university groups. Specialized trainings are available upon request._040f4982-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea00Salons & RoundtablesEngage informal dialogues across fields, institutions, and disciplines._040f4ab8-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea006Informal dialogues across fields, institutions, and disciplines designed to build solidarity, knowledge, research, and policy._040f4cde-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea00ConsultingOffer consulting services._040f4e14-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea007The Public Science Project offers individual and ongoing consulting services on research, evaluation, participatory practice, and policy design._040f4fa4-a742-11ea-ba01-0bda0383ea002020-06-06https://publicscienceproject.org/about/what-we-do/OwenAmburOwen.Ambur@verizon.net