safety

When Resilience Becomes Resistance: Recultivating Intimacy through Relational Mindfulness

Photo of EPIC2022 attendees watching a presentation by Chelsea Coe and Jonathan DeFaveri
CHELSEA COE Headspace JONATHAN DEFAVERI Headspace [s2If is_user_logged_in()]DOWNLOAD PDF [/s2If] What forms of our pandemic adaptation have also become barriers to connection? In this wildcard session, around 40 EPIC attendees collectively examined the aspects of resilience that support—and sometimes hold us back from—the intimacy and safety we seek to create as ethnographers. Researchers have faced many barriers to building connection and compassion remotely as the stress in our communities piles up from the COVID-19 pandemic. When people share their pain, how do we protect the integrity of our work while also showing care? What are we doing to ensure our own resilience? How do we show care and connection again in person after time spent adapting to screens? In this session, the presenters began by sharing and deconstructing their own personal experiences of navigating this tension as researchers working in mental health through three lenses: connection, protection, and comfort/discomfort.  Working with Headspace meditation...

Cultivating Resiliencies for All: The Necessity of Trauma Responsive Research Practices

Presentation slide: an arial view of a meandering river. Overlain text: "A Trauma Responsive Development Model. 1. Aware. 2. Sensitive. 3. Informed. 4. Responsive"
MATTHEW BERNIUS Code for America RACHAEL DIETKUS Social Workers Who Design DOWNLOAD PDF[s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] This paper is an exploration of trauma, how and why it can surface during ethnographic and qualitative research, and the importance of anticipating its potential presence. We present a model to help plan for and mitigate the risks of trauma and demonstrate how it fits into broader methodological discussions of conducting safer and more ethical, responsible, and humane research. We close by discussing one pathway for a journey from being sensitive and aware of trauma to actively responding to it at both the individual and organizational levels across your work. Keywords: Trauma informed care, trauma responsive research and design, design research, ethics, qualitative methods Article citation: 2022 EPIC Proceedings pp 9–34, ISSN 1559-8918, https://www.epicpeople.org/epic [s2If !current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] To access the video presentation: JOIN EPIC or...

Adapting to the Lack of Agency: Research in Prisons

RUBEN PEREZ HUIDOBRO Shopify   [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] [s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Join EPIC to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] [s2If current_user_is(subscriber)] Join EPIC to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] PechaKucha Presentation How can a researcher adapt to the lack of agency in secure environments? HM Inspectorate of Prisons in the UK published in 2012 a thematic report about the use of the “person escort record” (PER) with detainees at risk of self-harm, highlighting the high number of deaths in custody. The PER was used during the transport of people under custody, and informed about their security and safety issues. As a result of this report, my team had the mandate to improve how security and safety risks were communicated. I needed to identify the needs and pain points of the people working on prison and court services, and I did so throughout multiple contextual research...

Designing Queer Connection: An Ethnography of Dating App Production in Urban India

VISHNUPRIYA DAS University of Michigan [s2If is_user_logged_in()] DOWNLOAD PDF [/s2If] [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] India is currently at the precipice of immense social and technological change. The proliferation of smartphones and growth of the nation's app economy raise questions about how digital platforms might influence the contours of love, sex, and desire in the region in the coming decades. This paper engages with these concerns by examining what it means to design intimate connection for LGBTQ communities in non-western spaces. Drawing on fieldnotes, app walkthroughs, interviews with mid-level and upper-level professionals in the dating app space as well as audiovisual material from advertising archives, this paper provides readers with a critical analysis of the “problem” of designing queer connection in a digital world of abundant data and transient identities. Carefully examining the production practices of Delta, India's first locally produced LGBTQ dating app I argue that there...

Confessions Across Digital Distances

JESS SHUTT Salesforce PechaKucha Presentation Digital environments can expand the distances between people. While this is often challenging, it can also be leveraged to do great things. This PechaKucha explores how we can take this negative divide between people and flip it on its head to discover more powerful insights. By looking at a range of studies focused on sensitive subjects, we explore how technology has the power to create a safer environment for vulnerable participants. While technology is an often underutilized research tool, these technology enabled environments can lead to richer data and insights. As a result, we, as researchers, can create the space needed to share some of our most intimate stories. Jess Shutt has dedicated her career to studying & creating technology to help democratize complex processes & systems from finance to consumer robotics. Her current work as the Lead User Researcher of Einstein at Salesforce focuses on applying these concepts to artificial intelligence. 2018 EPIC Proceedings,...