Claudia Mitchell - Participatory Visual Methodologies: Social Change, Community and Policy

Claudia Mitchellis a James McGill Professor in the Faculty of Education, McGill University where she is the Director of the McGill Institute for Human Development and Well-being and the founder and Director of the Participatory Cultures Lab. She is an Honorary Professor in the School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. She was the 2016 recipient of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Gold Medal awarded for the impact of her research which cuts across a number of areas including girlhood studies, youth, sexuality, and HIV and AIDS, gender violence, and teacher identity, and in a number of countries including Canada, South Africa, Russia, Ethiopia, and Kenya. As a methodologist, she is particularly interested in participatory visual research, memory-work and material culture, and autoethnography. She has 25 books published or in press, many of which pertain to visual and other arts based methodologies: Doing Visual Research; Researching Childrens Popular Culture (with Jacqueline Reid-Walsh), Putting People in the Picture (with Naydene DeLange and Jean Stuart); Drawing as Visual Methodology (with Linda Theron, Ann Smith and Jean Stuart), Handbook of Participatory Video (with EJ Milne and Naydene DeLange), Participatory Visual Methodologies in Global Public Health (with Marni Sommers) and Visual Encounters in the Study of Rural Childhoods (with April Mandrona). She is a co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of the award winning journal Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal.Naydene de Langeis Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Education at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa. She previously held the HIV and AIDS Education Research Chair in the Faculty of Education at the same university. Her research focuses on using participatory visual methodologies in addressing gender and HIV&AIDS issues, and integrating HIV&AIDS into Higher Education curricula. Her Educational Psychology background and interest in Inclusive Education provides a frame for working towards the inclusion of those who are marginalized using a research as social change approach. Besides peer reviewed articles and book chapters, she has co-edited three books, Putting People in the Picture: Visual Methodologies for Social Change (with Claudia Mitchell and Jean Stuart), School-University Partnerships for Educational Change in Rural South Africa (with Faisal Islam, Claudia Mitchell, Robert Balfour and Martin Combrinck), and The Handbook of Participatory Video (with EJ Milne and Claudia Mitchell), and has also co-authored a book Picturing Hope (with Tilla Olivier and Lesley Wood). She is the 2014 runner-up in the Distinguished Women in Science: Social Sciences and Humanities Award (awarded by the South African National Department of Science and Technology) and a South African National Research Foundation rated researcher. She is co-founder and co-editor of the journal, Educational Research for Social Change.Relebohile Moletsaneis Professor and the John Langalibalele Dube Chair in Rural Education in the School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. Her areas of research include curriculum studies, rural education, gender and education, sexual and reproductive health education, girlhood studies and girls education in Southern African contexts. She is the Co-PI (with Claudia Mitchell, McGill University) on the Networks for Change and Wellbeing project (Networks for Change and Well-being (www.networks4change.co.za/). The project uses participatory visual methodologies, including photo-voice, participatory video (cellphilm), digital storytelling and drawing to address sexual violence with girls in rural KwaZulu-Natal. She is the co-author (with Claudia Mitchell, Ann Smith and Linda Chisholm) of the book: Methodologies for Mapping a Southern African Girlhood in Age of Aids. Rotterdam/New York/Taipei: Sense Publishers. Moletsane was the 2012 winner of the Distinguished Women in Science: Social Sciences and Humanities Award (awarded by the South African National Department of Science and Technology). She was a 2014 Echidna Global Scholar at Brookings Institutions Centre for Universal Education, where she completed a research report: The Need for Quality Sexual and Reproductive Health Education to Address Barriers to Girls Educational Outcomes in South Africa. Washington, DC: Centre for Universal Education, The Brookings Institution.