Elena Vacchelli | Middlesex University (original) (raw)
Papers by Elena Vacchelli
Routledge eBooks, Jul 12, 2023
Policy Press eBooks, Jul 4, 2018
This chapter discusses collage making is an art-based, non-textual form of representation. The pr... more This chapter discusses collage making is an art-based, non-textual form of representation. The process of engaging in a group activity has the potential to elicit verbal explanations that alone might otherwise be too narrow and not necessarily include broader life experiences. Collage-making was used to engage migrant, refugee, and asylum-seeking women in order to elicit personal stories about individual experiences of sensitive nature, such as accessing mental health services. It should be noted that participants' subject position of vulnerable women is not an essential feature of their personality but a structurally determined, and hopefully transient, material condition. Most of the women are strong, assertive, and resourceful migrants who have been able to negotiate and embody their experiences of displacement in different ways.
Abstract of the Editorial In “The right to the city” Henri Lefebvre (1968/1996) analysed the dial... more Abstract of the Editorial In “The right to the city” Henri Lefebvre (1968/1996) analysed the dialectic tension between the implosion of historic centres and the explosion of the urban beyond existing city boundaries under capitalist industrialization. The context of his intervention almost 50 years ago was the development of a national technocratic planning and the beginnings of gentrification in Paris' historic city centre. The city as a space occupied by productive labour, by oeuvres and festivities was being lost. The neocapitalist city had replaced the historic core, which once represented the centre of decision-making according to the Western democratic imaginary, into a centre of consumption. The right to the city cannot be conceived simply as a visiting right or a call for a return to traditional cities. It can only be formulated as a transformed and renewed right to urban life for the whole of society and especially for those who inhabit it. The right to the city is open to all urban dwellers and not just citizens according to their social contract with the state (Lefebvre and Groupe de Navarrenx (1990/2003). In conjunction with the right to difference and the right to information, the right to the city should work towards establishing a right for citizens as urban dwellers, especially with regards to their right to use of the centre, a privileged space compared to the ghettos for workers, immigrants, marginalised and for the wealthy who live in suburbs. The right to the city can be claimed by those who contribute to its daily production and social reproduction and are therefore empowered by it. The resurgence of Lefebvre's Right to the City is in part linked to the increasing recognition that the city provides a more relevant focus to explore social relations as well as socio-economic issues than the nation-state (Massey, 2005). Although a wealth of literature has been produced about the right to the city across the globe (Brenner & Schmid, 2015; Harvey, 2012; Kipfer, Saberi, & Wieditz, 2013; Purcell, 2002; Sugranyes & Mathivet, 2010), we argue that the right to the city as conceived by Lefebvre necessitates more than ever an engagement and re-contextualision given the fact that some of these concepts have changed, others have been revised, and importantly did not take into account gender
Policy Press eBooks, Jul 4, 2018
The definition of data in qualitative research is expanding. This book highlights the value of em... more The definition of data in qualitative research is expanding. This book highlights the value of embodiment as a qualitative research tool and outlines what it means to do embodied research at various points of the research process. It shows how using this non-invasive approach with vulnerable research participants such as migrant, refugee, and asylum-seeking women can help service users or research participants to be involved in the co-production of services and in participatory research. Drawing on both feminist and post-colonial theory, the author uses her own research with migrant women in London, focusing specifically on collage making and digital storytelling, whilst also considering other potential tools for practicing embodied research such as yoga, personal diaries, dance, and mindfulness. Situating the concept of ‘embodiment’ on the map of research methodologies, the book combines theoretical groundwork with actual examples of application to think pragmatically about intersectionality through embodiment.
Embodied Research in Migration Studies
This chapter provides examples of creative and participatory work done when qualitatively researc... more This chapter provides examples of creative and participatory work done when qualitatively researching race, gender, and migration. The ground-breaking practices developed by voluntary and community organisations and NGOs to help the communities they target is constantly evolving, differs according to the area of intervention, and is not systematically documented or mapped in a coherent body of work. Rather, it is fragmented, unevenly developed within organisations and highly dependent on the context in which these experimentations with creative methods take place. The chapter reviews the experience of third-sector organisations using embodied approaches to engage their service users and discusses examples of research conducted using participatory and creative research methods in the social sciences, before focusing specifically on research which has dealt with embodied methodologies in the field of migration. Colonial relationships in research are considered from a critical perspective.
Embodied Research in Migration Studies, 2018
This chapter discusses collage making is an art-based, non-textual form of representation. The pr... more This chapter discusses collage making is an art-based, non-textual form of representation. The process of engaging in a group activity has the potential to elicit verbal explanations that alone might otherwise be too narrow and not necessarily include broader life experiences. Collage-making was used to engage migrant, refugee, and asylum-seeking women in order to elicit personal stories about individual experiences of sensitive nature, such as accessing mental health services. It should be noted that participants' subject position of vulnerable women is not an essential feature of their personality but a structurally determined, and hopefully transient, material condition. Most of the women are strong, assertive, and resourceful migrants who have been able to negotiate and embody their experiences of displacement in different ways.
We listen, we really, really listen. " Heart-sink patient-GPs heart sinks when he sees them comin... more We listen, we really, really listen. " Heart-sink patient-GPs heart sinks when he sees them coming through the door" We take them as we find them. " People who are most needy don't access the services they need" Somebody there for them, not paid, but (special). " Mainstream services don't work for vulnerable women" Women do need reaching out to.
Les cahiers du CEDREF, 2014
Throughout the 1970s Milan was a laboratory for social and political practices. In Milan, before ... more Throughout the 1970s Milan was a laboratory for social and political practices. In Milan, before other Italian cities, the 1968 students and workers movement had attempted to subvert local institutions by challenging them through protest and other forms of action. Revolutionary neighbourhood committees and anti-authoritarian schools were self-managed by activists themselves ; like in other Italian cities such as Turin, in Milan factories were the key place of this struggle consisting of strik...
Identities, 2020
The paper critically examines the way diversity is conceptualised as a dominant discourse and as ... more The paper critically examines the way diversity is conceptualised as a dominant discourse and as a paradigm for understanding the present, which has gradually replaced multiculturalism in academic and policy discourse. Using our interviews with third sector practitioners providing mental health support to a wealth of migrant populations in London, the paper offers key examples of how TSOs (Third Sector Organisations) address migrant women's diverse needs, showing how diversity is practised in the everyday of community groups. This paper's novelty consists in exposing overlaps and divergences between diversity discourses and diversity practices and its added value lays in the combination of academic and practitioner perspectives in the study of TSOs supporting migrant, refugee and asylum seeker women in London.
Qualitative Research, 2017
This article draws on the creative methods deployed in the course of a research project aimed at ... more This article draws on the creative methods deployed in the course of a research project aimed at mapping community-based mental health service provision and other specific services migrant, refugee and asylum seeking women regularly access in London. Although the study made use of a mixed method research design, only the art-based approach deployed as part of the focus groups is discussed. The article contributes to developing embodied research methods in that it explores the bodily engagement of research participants in making a collage and unpacks the implications of this approach for collecting qualitative data involving experiential activity. The body plays a central role in generating qualitative data through the making of the collage and collage-making represents an embodied experience suggesting that how we feel, how we perceive, how we relate to our own bodies and the place they have in the order of things – is contextual, gendered, relational, historically and culturally situated.
Hagar, 2013
This article addresses embodied methodologies in geographical research and draws on reflexivity a... more This article addresses embodied methodologies in geographical research and draws on reflexivity as a specifically feminist methodology for explaining the kind of relationality which exists among the ‘objects’ of research. Researching reflexively means acknowledging that the bodily presence of the researcher, her/his subjectivity, identity and knowledges influence, interact and modifies the field of research contributing to discard the notion of ‘objective research’. It is well known that women and homosexuals have been depicted as ‘the other’, trapped in their bodily experience, by mainstream scientific knowledge. For this reason, feminist epistemologies such as politics of location, situated knowledges, positionality and standpoint theories represent a way to re-appropriate the body as a tool of inquiry. In Italian feminism, separatist practices such as consciousness-raising have been a poignant example of the use of the body as a vector of knowledge. It is through the bodily exposure in a collective space that personal narratives assumed a political meaning. The materiality of researching using inter-corporeal embodied methodologies will be addressed by drawing on consciousness-raising as a technology of the self that uses the body as a necessary starting point. Positionality is understood as a way to mobilize knowledge, which is always embodied, when researching feminist spatial practices in Milan.
Sociological Research Online, 2015
This article aims at problematizing the boundaries of what counts as focus group and in so doing ... more This article aims at problematizing the boundaries of what counts as focus group and in so doing it identifies some continuity between focus group and workshop, especially when it comes to arts informed and activity laden focus groups. The workshop [1] is often marginalized as a legitimate method for qualitative data collection outside PAR (Participatory Action Research)-based methodologies. Using examples from our research projects in East Africa and in London we argue that there are areas of overlap between these two methods, yet we tend to use concepts and definitions associated with focus groups because of the lack of visibility of workshops in qualitative research methods academic literature. The article argues that focus groups and workshops present a series of intertwined features resulting in a blending of the two which needs further exploration. In problematizing the boundaries of focus groups and recognizing the increasing usage of art-based and activity-based processes fo...
Routledge eBooks, Jul 12, 2023
Policy Press eBooks, Jul 4, 2018
This chapter discusses collage making is an art-based, non-textual form of representation. The pr... more This chapter discusses collage making is an art-based, non-textual form of representation. The process of engaging in a group activity has the potential to elicit verbal explanations that alone might otherwise be too narrow and not necessarily include broader life experiences. Collage-making was used to engage migrant, refugee, and asylum-seeking women in order to elicit personal stories about individual experiences of sensitive nature, such as accessing mental health services. It should be noted that participants' subject position of vulnerable women is not an essential feature of their personality but a structurally determined, and hopefully transient, material condition. Most of the women are strong, assertive, and resourceful migrants who have been able to negotiate and embody their experiences of displacement in different ways.
Abstract of the Editorial In “The right to the city” Henri Lefebvre (1968/1996) analysed the dial... more Abstract of the Editorial In “The right to the city” Henri Lefebvre (1968/1996) analysed the dialectic tension between the implosion of historic centres and the explosion of the urban beyond existing city boundaries under capitalist industrialization. The context of his intervention almost 50 years ago was the development of a national technocratic planning and the beginnings of gentrification in Paris' historic city centre. The city as a space occupied by productive labour, by oeuvres and festivities was being lost. The neocapitalist city had replaced the historic core, which once represented the centre of decision-making according to the Western democratic imaginary, into a centre of consumption. The right to the city cannot be conceived simply as a visiting right or a call for a return to traditional cities. It can only be formulated as a transformed and renewed right to urban life for the whole of society and especially for those who inhabit it. The right to the city is open to all urban dwellers and not just citizens according to their social contract with the state (Lefebvre and Groupe de Navarrenx (1990/2003). In conjunction with the right to difference and the right to information, the right to the city should work towards establishing a right for citizens as urban dwellers, especially with regards to their right to use of the centre, a privileged space compared to the ghettos for workers, immigrants, marginalised and for the wealthy who live in suburbs. The right to the city can be claimed by those who contribute to its daily production and social reproduction and are therefore empowered by it. The resurgence of Lefebvre's Right to the City is in part linked to the increasing recognition that the city provides a more relevant focus to explore social relations as well as socio-economic issues than the nation-state (Massey, 2005). Although a wealth of literature has been produced about the right to the city across the globe (Brenner & Schmid, 2015; Harvey, 2012; Kipfer, Saberi, & Wieditz, 2013; Purcell, 2002; Sugranyes & Mathivet, 2010), we argue that the right to the city as conceived by Lefebvre necessitates more than ever an engagement and re-contextualision given the fact that some of these concepts have changed, others have been revised, and importantly did not take into account gender
Policy Press eBooks, Jul 4, 2018
The definition of data in qualitative research is expanding. This book highlights the value of em... more The definition of data in qualitative research is expanding. This book highlights the value of embodiment as a qualitative research tool and outlines what it means to do embodied research at various points of the research process. It shows how using this non-invasive approach with vulnerable research participants such as migrant, refugee, and asylum-seeking women can help service users or research participants to be involved in the co-production of services and in participatory research. Drawing on both feminist and post-colonial theory, the author uses her own research with migrant women in London, focusing specifically on collage making and digital storytelling, whilst also considering other potential tools for practicing embodied research such as yoga, personal diaries, dance, and mindfulness. Situating the concept of ‘embodiment’ on the map of research methodologies, the book combines theoretical groundwork with actual examples of application to think pragmatically about intersectionality through embodiment.
Embodied Research in Migration Studies
This chapter provides examples of creative and participatory work done when qualitatively researc... more This chapter provides examples of creative and participatory work done when qualitatively researching race, gender, and migration. The ground-breaking practices developed by voluntary and community organisations and NGOs to help the communities they target is constantly evolving, differs according to the area of intervention, and is not systematically documented or mapped in a coherent body of work. Rather, it is fragmented, unevenly developed within organisations and highly dependent on the context in which these experimentations with creative methods take place. The chapter reviews the experience of third-sector organisations using embodied approaches to engage their service users and discusses examples of research conducted using participatory and creative research methods in the social sciences, before focusing specifically on research which has dealt with embodied methodologies in the field of migration. Colonial relationships in research are considered from a critical perspective.
Embodied Research in Migration Studies, 2018
This chapter discusses collage making is an art-based, non-textual form of representation. The pr... more This chapter discusses collage making is an art-based, non-textual form of representation. The process of engaging in a group activity has the potential to elicit verbal explanations that alone might otherwise be too narrow and not necessarily include broader life experiences. Collage-making was used to engage migrant, refugee, and asylum-seeking women in order to elicit personal stories about individual experiences of sensitive nature, such as accessing mental health services. It should be noted that participants' subject position of vulnerable women is not an essential feature of their personality but a structurally determined, and hopefully transient, material condition. Most of the women are strong, assertive, and resourceful migrants who have been able to negotiate and embody their experiences of displacement in different ways.
We listen, we really, really listen. " Heart-sink patient-GPs heart sinks when he sees them comin... more We listen, we really, really listen. " Heart-sink patient-GPs heart sinks when he sees them coming through the door" We take them as we find them. " People who are most needy don't access the services they need" Somebody there for them, not paid, but (special). " Mainstream services don't work for vulnerable women" Women do need reaching out to.
Les cahiers du CEDREF, 2014
Throughout the 1970s Milan was a laboratory for social and political practices. In Milan, before ... more Throughout the 1970s Milan was a laboratory for social and political practices. In Milan, before other Italian cities, the 1968 students and workers movement had attempted to subvert local institutions by challenging them through protest and other forms of action. Revolutionary neighbourhood committees and anti-authoritarian schools were self-managed by activists themselves ; like in other Italian cities such as Turin, in Milan factories were the key place of this struggle consisting of strik...
Identities, 2020
The paper critically examines the way diversity is conceptualised as a dominant discourse and as ... more The paper critically examines the way diversity is conceptualised as a dominant discourse and as a paradigm for understanding the present, which has gradually replaced multiculturalism in academic and policy discourse. Using our interviews with third sector practitioners providing mental health support to a wealth of migrant populations in London, the paper offers key examples of how TSOs (Third Sector Organisations) address migrant women's diverse needs, showing how diversity is practised in the everyday of community groups. This paper's novelty consists in exposing overlaps and divergences between diversity discourses and diversity practices and its added value lays in the combination of academic and practitioner perspectives in the study of TSOs supporting migrant, refugee and asylum seeker women in London.
Qualitative Research, 2017
This article draws on the creative methods deployed in the course of a research project aimed at ... more This article draws on the creative methods deployed in the course of a research project aimed at mapping community-based mental health service provision and other specific services migrant, refugee and asylum seeking women regularly access in London. Although the study made use of a mixed method research design, only the art-based approach deployed as part of the focus groups is discussed. The article contributes to developing embodied research methods in that it explores the bodily engagement of research participants in making a collage and unpacks the implications of this approach for collecting qualitative data involving experiential activity. The body plays a central role in generating qualitative data through the making of the collage and collage-making represents an embodied experience suggesting that how we feel, how we perceive, how we relate to our own bodies and the place they have in the order of things – is contextual, gendered, relational, historically and culturally situated.
Hagar, 2013
This article addresses embodied methodologies in geographical research and draws on reflexivity a... more This article addresses embodied methodologies in geographical research and draws on reflexivity as a specifically feminist methodology for explaining the kind of relationality which exists among the ‘objects’ of research. Researching reflexively means acknowledging that the bodily presence of the researcher, her/his subjectivity, identity and knowledges influence, interact and modifies the field of research contributing to discard the notion of ‘objective research’. It is well known that women and homosexuals have been depicted as ‘the other’, trapped in their bodily experience, by mainstream scientific knowledge. For this reason, feminist epistemologies such as politics of location, situated knowledges, positionality and standpoint theories represent a way to re-appropriate the body as a tool of inquiry. In Italian feminism, separatist practices such as consciousness-raising have been a poignant example of the use of the body as a vector of knowledge. It is through the bodily exposure in a collective space that personal narratives assumed a political meaning. The materiality of researching using inter-corporeal embodied methodologies will be addressed by drawing on consciousness-raising as a technology of the self that uses the body as a necessary starting point. Positionality is understood as a way to mobilize knowledge, which is always embodied, when researching feminist spatial practices in Milan.
Sociological Research Online, 2015
This article aims at problematizing the boundaries of what counts as focus group and in so doing ... more This article aims at problematizing the boundaries of what counts as focus group and in so doing it identifies some continuity between focus group and workshop, especially when it comes to arts informed and activity laden focus groups. The workshop [1] is often marginalized as a legitimate method for qualitative data collection outside PAR (Participatory Action Research)-based methodologies. Using examples from our research projects in East Africa and in London we argue that there are areas of overlap between these two methods, yet we tend to use concepts and definitions associated with focus groups because of the lack of visibility of workshops in qualitative research methods academic literature. The article argues that focus groups and workshops present a series of intertwined features resulting in a blending of the two which needs further exploration. In problematizing the boundaries of focus groups and recognizing the increasing usage of art-based and activity-based processes fo...
I metodi creativi sono approcci processuali che prevedono la creazione di artefatti, anche digita... more I metodi creativi sono approcci processuali che prevedono la creazione di artefatti, anche digitali, utili per incorporare pratiche quotidiane e performative nel progetto di ricerca. Essi implicano la validazione di saperi ed esperienze di soggetti situati fuori delle istituzioni accademiche tradizionali e creano processi collaborativi e dialogici nella produzione del dato. Il volume costituisce uno strumento innovativo per la pratica di ricerca, attraverso la presentazione e l’analisi delle forme che questi metodi hanno assunto in relazione ai dibattiti in corso nella ricerca qualitativa contemporanea.