A Feminist Activist Research to mainstream awareness of gender-related violence in universities through photovoice

ABSTRACT

Sexual and gender-related violences (SeGReV) is more normalised in the university community than we might expect, even though there have been important changes in HEI politics and policies in this sense. Therefore, sensitisation is essential. In this paper, we present multidisciplinary international research that, implicating around 40 university teachers and 300 students, aimed to approach this necessity through the design and evaluation of an innovative pedagogical protocol. Our text serves two purposes: to reflect on the effectiveness of photovoice to increase the student’s awareness of SeGReV; and to introduce and exemplify the specificity of Feminist Activist Research (FAR), a methodological approach that rises from the intersection of Action Research, Activist Research and Feminist epistemology. We will show how the applied approach of our project, the production of training materials, and other disseminative actions, proved to be a valuable practice for increasing the SeGReV awareness of university students. In this sense, becomes clear that photovoice can be an important ally, as it is an extremely useful technique both on a pedagogical level and as a research instrument. Last but not least, we exemplify the adequacy and peculiarity of FAR as a research approach.

Graphical abstract

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual and gender-related violences
• photovoice
• teaching innovation
• gender mainstreaming
• Feminist pedagogy
• Feminist Activist Research

Acknowledgments

We are deeply grateful to all the colleagues who have collaborated on the projects:

PhV_SeGReV: Mainstreaming Sexual and Gender-Related Violence sensibilities into university courses through Photovoice experiences (http://www.innovaciondocentegenero.eu/photovoice/)

SeGReVUni: Visibilising and measuring the scale and scope of sexual and gender-related violence in universities (http://www.segrevuni.eu/en/the-project/) and to the students who participated both in the pilot and in the COIL experience.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Geolocation information

The data have been collected online. Participants are from universities located at: Tarragona (Spain); Barcelona (Spain), Madrid (Spain); Bilbao (Spain); Sevilla (Spain); Mendoza (Argentina); Pachuca (Mexico); Joondalup (Australia); Melbourne (Australia); Muckleneuk Ridge, Pretoria (South Africa).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2024.2331199.

Notes

1. Even though violence is an uncountable noun in English and therefore should never be pluralised, we pluralise it to make explicit the different forms and types of violence it represents.

2. We mentioned direct quotes of students’ voices anonymously referring to the group or experience they have been participating in.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Agency for Management of University and Research Grants of the Catalunya Generality under the Grants for innovation projects to improve the quality of teaching on gender violence [2020 INDOV 00003]; the Spanish Ministry of Science, Research and University and the European Union under the Programa Estatal de Investigación I+D+I Orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad 2018 [RTI2018-093627-B-I00]; the Secretaria d’Universitats i Recerca del Departament d’Empresa i Coneixement at the Generalitat de Catalunya, the European Union (EU) and the European Social Fund (ESF) under Joan Oró grant to hire research staff in training [RTI2018-093627-B-I0].