The Stories of Research is a research project critically examining feminist participatory methodologies. This research looks specifically at one innovative participatory process conducted within the Gender, Justice and Security Hub called ‘The Story of the Hub’. As members of the Hub, the three project Co-Investigators conducted participatory workshops, interviews, and digital storytelling methods with the Hub’s 150 researchers over three years. The collaboratively created outputs tell the story of each project as well as the collective insights that emerged from across all projects.

Rather than focusing on the substance of those outputs, this research project turns the magnifying glass around to critically examine the feminist participatory process used to create and disseminate them. To do so, the project uses a series of story circles to elicit reflexive dialogue amongst the researchers to examine their experiences of designing, implementing, and evaluating the Story of the Hub methodology. This reflexivity and critical awareness of process and delivery creates space for reflections on the connections between the epistemic violence inherent in the unjust and violent structures and contexts in which the Hub’s work took place, namely the interlocking impacts of patriarchy, colonialism capitalism, and militarism, and the often (un)intended continuation of this epistemic violence in traditional research practices and communication.

Overall, the project aims to interrogate and illuminate an innovative participatory methodology designed by the researchers and implemented for the Hub. In doing so, the project seeks to uncover the potential benefits, challenges, and risks of this methodology, and others like it, and to distil key lessons learned that might support new ways of designing, conducting, and communicating feminist research.