Participatory action research in neoliberal academia: An uphill struggle

Gearoid Millar; Matias  Volonterio; Lidia  Cabral; Iva Pesa; Melanie Levick-Parkin

doi:10.1177/14687941241259979

Participatory action research in neoliberal academia: An uphill struggle

Gearoid Millar^* (Corresponding Author)
, Matias Volonterio
, Lidia Cabral
, Iva Pesa
, Melanie Levick-Parkin

^*Corresponding author for this work

Sociology

Institute for Development Studies
University of Groningen
Sheffield Hallam University

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

16 Citations (Scopus)

7 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Participatory Action Research (PAR) is described in the literature as a valuable method for enhancing the power of marginalized individuals and communities by collectively producing knowledge to transform the inequalities they experience. This deviates from most social science research, where such actors are largely the subjects of data extraction. This paper reports on our experience of using PAR to examine existing food systems and ideas regarding ‘just food system transitions’ alongside Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Brazil, Sierra Leone, United Kingdom, and Zambia. We describe our efforts to encourage these partners to participate in research design, data collection, and analysis in line with PAR ideals. Our experience fell short of our expectations for a PAR project. While some limitations relate to the Covid-19 pandemic, this paper focuses on the structures of contemporary neoliberal academia, which, we found, actively obstructed the realization of the optimistic claims of the PAR literature.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	478-498
Number of pages	21
Journal	Qualitative Research
Volume	25
Issue number	2
Early online date	17 Jun 2024
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241259979
Publication status	Published - Apr 2025

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the British Academy (grant number VSFoFJT\100015).

Funders	Funder number
British Academy	VSFoFJT\100015

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 2 Zero Hunger
SDG 3 Good Health and Well-being
SDG 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth
SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities
SDG 12 Responsible Consumption and Production

Keywords

Participatory Action Research
Neoliberal University
Food Systems
Just Transition
Non-Governmental Organizations

Access to Document

10.1177/14687941241259979Licence: CC BY-NC

Millar_etal_QR_Participatory_action_research_VOR
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Final published version, 313 KBLicence: CC BY-NC

Cite this

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Participatory action research in neoliberal academia: An uphill struggle

Abstract

Funding

UN SDGs

Keywords

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