Liberatory Research Teams, Labs, and Collectives

Acknowledgment

Foreword

Chapter 1 - Nurturing Trees: A Framework for Liberatory Research Teams

Chapter 2 - Rooted in Thought, Guided by Liberation: Foundations of Liberatory Research Teams

Chapter 3 - Embracing Decolonial Sensibilities in Research Team Leadership

Chapter 4 - Considerations for Members of Liberatory Research Teams

Chapter 5 - The Formation and Onboarding of Liberatory Research Teams

Chapter 6 - Developing Community within Liberatory Research Teams

Chapter 7 - Communication as Care and Black Feminist Ethics in Liberatory Research Teams

Chapter 8 - Transitioning Roles and Offboarding within Liberatory Research Teams

Chapter 9 - Futures of Liberatory Research Teams: Impact as Relational Practice, Not Outcome

Index

Biography

Robin Phelps-Ward, Ed.D. is Associate Dean of the Graduate School and Associate Professor of Higher Education at Ball State University. A Black feminist higher education scholar, she has more than a decade of experience cultivating equitable environments through liberatory pedagogy, participatory research, and culturally relevant leadership.

Taryrn T. C. Brown, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor in the School of Teaching and Learning at the University of Florida. Her research explores the intersection of gender, race, and class in the lives of Black women and girls, amplifying the voices of youth and communities in education through participatory action research.

Anuoluwapo Bankole, M.A. is a doctoral student in the Doctor of Higher Education program at Ball State University. Her research explores the experiences of women of the African diaspora in workplace contexts, focusing on the intersections of body image, size, compensation, and equity.

'In the midst of structural assaults on academic freedom, rising tides of white Christian nationalisms on (and off) campus, and severe attempts to constrict and constrain critical race and feminist theorizing, the Phelps-Ward, Brown, and Bankole gift us a "green book" for navigating the academy, for contesting and transforming the brutal histories of research on, rather than with communities, and for producing critical inquiry that is at once provocative, abolitionist, participatory, and care-full. In a long line of powerful books on Black feminist inquiry, Liberatory Research Teams, Labs and Collectives moves readers where few have gone before—entering delicately the intimacies and power knots of inquiry; advancing the Black feminist obligations to stand on shoulders, honor silenced voices, attend to our research-power-dynamics, and produce materials that provoke the radical imagination. The authors have curated a volume of theory-methods-ethics-care, rooted in Black feminist epistemologies, dedicated to abolitionist scholarship, attuned to the wisdom, desires, wounds and solidarities that Black women bring to liberatory research. This volume significantly advances our understandings of collective reflexivity, knowledge production, and bone deep accountabilities to communities under siege. Written as an academic response of dignity, care and rigor, to the vicious federal call to ban DEI and all things feminist, the authors have crafted a volume for all rising scholars, women of color in particular, and those who seek to generate research for justice in unbearably difficult times. This volume will be a "take it to bed" beloved text, offering wisdom, comfort, methodological specificity, and a balm for the researcher's soul as we bear witness to the contentious—and yet joyfully resistant—times in which we live. This volume demands that readers fill the margins with notes, hand written emojis, bent pages, underlined passages to which you will return again, and again, with friends, co-researchers and your students. It's delicious, timely and we thank the authors for the gifts they bring.'

Michelle Fine, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Critical Psychology at the Graduate Center, and Visiting Scholar at University of South Africa

 

'Phelps-Ward, Brown, and Bankole have written the book that the field has quietly needed for years and rarely had the courage to produce. Liberatory Research Teams, Labs, and Collectives refuses the extractive, hierarchical models that have governed research team culture across disciplines, and offers in their place a framework grounded in Black feminist epistemology, decolonial praxis, and radical care. The tree metaphor is not ornamental; it is architecturally sound, organizing the full complexity of research team leadership into something practitioners can actually inhabit and use. What distinguishes this text is its insistence that liberation is not a destination appended to the research process but the condition under which ethical inquiry becomes possible at all. This is essential reading for anyone who leads, joins, or aspires to build research communities that center humanity over hierarchy.'

Kakali Bhattacharya, Ph.D. Author, Fundamentals of Qualitative Research, and Power, Race, and Higher Education: A Cross-Cultural Parallel Narrative; Series Editor, Futures of Data Analysis in Qualitative Research, Routledge

 

'This is the book I have been looking for and did not even know I needed. When facilitating and leading research teams I sought to do so from a place that rings true to how I was brought into a team the first time by a Black woman assistant professor when I was a doctoral student. I acted from instinct and did not know how to assess the success of the experience for the members or myself. I recorded the publication or presentation we produced. Yet, the research team is more than the product they produce. Learning how to assist the mostly all Black women research team graduate student members with their confidence, self-efficacy and knowledge of research from an equitable lens was mostly done by trial and error. That is until now. The book, Liberatory Research Teams, Labs, and Collectives, takes the guessing, hoping and wondering out of the process. I now have a go-to manual for me and my research team members that guides us in a structured, evidence-based way on how to move forward in a way that is unapologetically about freedom. Following the path laid out by the editors is an incredible resource for how I will lead research teams in the future and how I will help assure what we produce is aligned with our goals for equitable and just communities, policies and practices within higher education.'

Bridget Turner Kelly, Ph.D., Associate Professor, College of Education, University of Maryland

 

'Through the vehicle of a tree metaphor, these three scholars provide an extensive, comprehensive, and flexible framework for research teams, labs, and collectives that endeavor to center liberation as an anchoring axiological commitment. The tone and tenor of the text are at once gentle and guiding, accessible and erudite, and personal and political. I highly and enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone doing research alongside others, as it provides so much fodder for critical reflection.'

Amanda O. Latz, Ed.D., Professor of Higher Education and Community College Leadership, President, Council for the Study of Community Colleges, Ball State University | Department of Educational Leadership