A Critical Communal Questioning: Equitable Practices and Maintaining Rigour in the Expanding Field of Audience Studies
When and Where
Description
The Research Associates from the Centre for Spectatorship and Audience Research invite audience researchers to sign up for the symposium, A Critical Communal Questioning: Equitable Practices and Maintaining Rigour in the Expanding Field of Audience Studies. Bringing together graduate students and scholars working in this field, this hybrid event will address the reality that "audience researchers often find themselves embedded in disciplinary or departmental silos" (Walmsley 135). Accordingly, we invite participants to critically question how we approach audience research and share discoveries within the field across institutions, projects and amongst graduate students, scholars, practitioners and other stakeholders.
This lack of cohesion can be a barrier to developing equitable practices and maintaining rigour in the expanding field. As prominent audience studies scholar Kirsty Sedgman reflects, to develop further, audience studies requires a “sustained and overarching disciplinary examination of all the political, epistemological, ethical, and practical implications involved in investigating audience experience via empirical means, using different approaches and differing methodologies” (464). Integral to this examination is dedicating time and space to communally “acknowledge the intellectual and scholarly imperative to decolonise audience research practices by questioning the ‘reality’ of what constitutes the norms of our current practices” (Reason et al 13). For audience research to continue to be “a powerful social intervention in addition to inquiry,” we must maintain a close relationship to pursuing equitable practices and methodology (Gallagher et al. 332).
We welcome all attendees to sign-up for lightning-talk presentations where audience researchers can share snapshots of their work. These presentations will be a maximum of five minutes, intended to speak to existing work you have done. Feel free to share your work in the format you prefer (i.e., a short slideshow, more informal conversation, data visualization).
Complementing the lightning talks, the CSAR Research Associates will present the work being done within our group. We are also excited to welcome a guest speaker from the field.
Please use this form to indicate your interest in attending the symposium and to submit your proposal for a lightning-talk presentation by November 14th.