The NOG PhD Council is organising a workshop series on critical feminist research methods for PhD and RMA students. Seeing the popularity of a recent PhD methods course organised by Radboud Gender and Diversity Studies and NOG, it became clear that there is a demand for more critical and intersectional feminist methods trainings open to PhD students from different research fields. This workshop series therefore aims to fill the gap by providing participants with relevant practical knowledge to implement critical feminist approaches in their research.

The series consists of three separate workshops on the following topics: Queer and Feminist Archival Research, Feminist Ethnography and Interviewing, and Care Ethics in Research.
The workshops will be led by instructors who have experience with one of these approaches.
These instructors will reflect on their own experiences of the research process and what this entails. The workshops are loosely divided into three parts: (1) Instructors talk about their experiences with a certain method (2) Participants discuss the assigned literature and ask questions (3) Participants engage in a practical activity and share their own research
experiences.

Each workshop will last three hours and is worth 1 EC. In order to receive these credits, participants are required to complete a short reflective assignment and finish the assigned readings before the session. The workshops will take place in Utrecht in April and May 2025 (see the exact dates and location details below).

Participants can register for either one, two, or all of the workshops. You can register using this clickable link.
See the descriptions below for further details about the individual sessions.

Session 1: Queer, Feminist and Postcolonial Archival Research

Researching marginalized subjects causes difficulties for researchers, as historical
fragments are often scattered among different archives or remain absent. How can we navigate the silences of the archives? How do we apply queer, feminist and postcolonial research practices to institutions that are ingrained in systems of power? This workshop will navigate these and other questions feminist researchers might have about archival research.

This session will be led by Gianmaria Colpani, Assistant Professor of Gender Studies at Utrecht University, and Wigbertson Julian Isenia, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. Colpani will tell us about his research on the archives of the gay and lesbian left. In his work on LGSM, a gay and lesbian solidarity group active in the 1984-85 miners’ strike in the UK, he engaged with history methods from a gender and queer studies perspective. In this session, he will explain his methodological and practical approaches to engaging with archives. Isenia will present their work on postcolonial archives in the Dutch Caribbean. They will reflect on how to look at archives that may appear contradictory or incoherent in relation to one another, such as BDSM archives alongside archives of anti-colonial struggle, yet together reveal unexpected intersections of how power is constructed and remembered.

Date&Time: Wednesday, 16 April, 2025, 14:00-17:00h.
Location: UvA, TBA

Session 2: Feminist Ethnography and Qualitative Interviewing

How and why do we use feminist ethnography and what are its effects on knowledge production? In this workshop, we will explore how feminist ethnography offers a critical approach to studying everyday experiences, both in their methodological strategies and writing. It will focus on applying the methodology, including participant observation, ethnographic interviewing, nurturing a feminist sensibility, paying attention to power dynamics, and reflecting on positionality and relationality.

This workshop will be given by Dr. Jasmijn Rana, who is an anthropologist at Leiden University. Her research agenda focuses on sports and movement, embodiment, diversity in cultural heritage, gender and ethnoracial inequalities. She is the author of Punching Back: Gender, Religion and Belonging in Women Only Kickboxing (Berghahn Books 2022) and chair of LOVA Network for Feminist Anthropology. She currently leads the ERC-funded research project Diversity Outdoors: Embodied Ethnoracial Inequalities and Outdoor Recreation in Europe.

Date & Time: Friday, 2 May, 14:00-17:00h.
Location: Janskerkhof 2-3, Room 1.16

Session 3: Care Ethics in Research

How can we approach research in a way that emphasises care, empathy, and mutual responsibility? How can we apply this care to not only human but also non-human entities, challenging anthropocentric views and expanding our conception of research ethics? This workshop will engage with these questions and provide new ways of thinking about ethics
and care in critical feminist research.

The workshop will include a talk by Leonie Cornips, Professor of Language Culture in Limburg at Maastricht University and researcher of Sociolinguistics at NL-Lab Humanities Cluster, KNAW in Amsterdam. There will also be a screening of the short film she co-produced, which rethinks cow-human interactions through a queer perspective.
Professor Cornips’ research examines how language can be used to both include and exclude, and her latest work explores how cows communicate with one another and with humans. For this workshop, she will reflect on what an ethics of care means in her research and how this has informed her work. There will also be space for participants to reflect on how they can better integrate an ethics of care into their research projects.

Date & Time: Wednesday, 14 May, 13:30-16:30h
Location: Drift 25, Room 1.03

Details Course

Dates: Wednesday, April 16, Friday, May 2, and Wednesday, May 16, 2025.
Location: Session 1: University of Amsterdam. Session 2 & 3: Utrecht University
Time: Session 1 & 2: 14:00h-17:00h, Session 3: 13:30-16:30h.
ECTS: (for RMA students and PhD researchers) Each workshop will last three hours and is worth 1 EC. In order to receive these credits, participants are required to complete a short reflective assignment and finish the assigned readings before the session.
Registration: click on this link.