DSAA Webinar

Welcome to The DSAA monthly webinar series! 

Development is a dynamic space, bringing together research and practice across a range of disciplines. Our webinar series explores this diversity, bringing a new speaker who shares their expertise on a critical theme of interest every month. Each session will explore diverse topics, from building a CV for the international development sector to conducting community-based research and decolonising research practices. Through these interactive webinars, we aim to support HDR and ECR students in expanding their networks, gaining real-world insights, and advancing their academic and professional journeys. 

You can replay previous webinars from our YouTube Channel @DSA_Australia

UPCOMING WEBINAR 

Decolonising Research through Arts-Based Methods Webinar

Speaker: Professor Caroline Lenette, UNSW Sydney 

Organised by: DSAA Creative Approaches and Practices in Development Studies Thematic Research Working Group 

Chaired by: Dr Valentina Baú, Thematic Research Working Group convenor 

Date: Wednesday 11^th June 2025 

Time: 1-2 pm 

Location: Online – Visit our YouTube channel

Where does the concept of ‘decolonisation’ fit within discussions and scholarship on creative research? Despite the emancipatory promise of creative approaches, a lack of understanding of the colonial roots of research methods means that we risk reproducing harmful norms and impacts. A lack of explicit and critical discussions about creative methods suggests that we are reinforcing, rather than disrupting, the colonial roots of research. In this presentation, Caroline outlines why it is imperative to consider anti-coloniality as an intrinsic part of creative research, rather than an afterthought, and discusses the steps to take towards deconstructing current thinking informed by a colonial agenda. Throughout her talk, Caroline will also make reference to her new edited collection, Anti-Colonial Research Praxis: Methods for Knowledge Justice. 

Bio: 

Caroline Lenette is a Professor of Anti-Colonial Research in the School of Social Sciences and Deputy Director of the Big Anxiety Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. She is an uninvited migrant settler living and working on colonised Bedigal Land. Caroline is known for her contributions to refugee studies and her scholarship on participatory arts-based methodologies in collaboration with refugee-background co-researchers. Her current research explores intergenerational trauma and sociocultural notions of suicidality. Caroline is the author of Arts-Based Methods in Refugee Research: Creating Sanctuary (Springer, 2019); Participatory Action Research: Ethics and Decolonization (Oxford University Press, 2022), Disrupting the Academy with Lived Experience-Led Knowledge (Policy Press, 2024 – co-editor) and Anti-Colonial Research Praxis: Methods for Knowledge Justice (Manchester University Press, 2025 – editor). Caroline created the Anti-Colonial Research Library, an online repository that hosts a wide selection of resources on First Nations and majority-world research methodologies from around the world. 

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