This past June in Albuquerque’s International District, District 6 City Councilor Nichole Rogers joined with other community leaders to open a new food and vendor market. It was one outcome of a University of New Mexico “community-based and action research” project, which describes a democratic process in which community members come together to propose projects and then work together to put those projects into action.
As part of an upcoming UNM conference on community-based and action research to be held Thursday and Friday, one workshop will “involve both people from UNM and people from District 6,” said conference co-organizer Frances Hayashida, director of UNM’s Latin American and Iberian Institute, in order “to hear the process of what happened and how change happens from the ground up.”
Overall, the conference seeks to bridge Latin American and local perspectives. Nina Wallerstein, director of the Center for Participatory Research at UNM’s College of Population Health, said that’s because the tradition of participatory research came from academics in the 1970s in Latin America – and other continents as well – “to leave the scholarly halls of the academy, go out and start working with social movements.” That’s because social movements were where communities were “mobilizing based on their own issues,” Wallerstein said, rather than an academic question or project.
Wallerstein herself has worked with communities in Brazil as well as across New Mexico, including rural Hispanic communities and with tribal research teams, who share authorship of any publications coming from the community-based and action research.
“That’s an important best practice to show that this is truly an authentic co-creation,” said Wallerstein.
Another best practice, Wallerstein said, is food: “To all of our community meetings with community partners, we bring food.”
So for anyone interested in coming to the conference later this week, Hayashida encourages people to register in advance, “So we know how much food to order.”
