Participatory Visual and Digital Research in Action

This collection of original articles, a companion to the authors’ Participatory Visual and Digital Methods, illustrates how a variety of innovative techniques are being used in various field projects across disciplines and geographic locations.

Aline Gubrium is an Associate Professor of Public Health (Community Health Education) and a medical anthropologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Gubrium uses participatory, digital, visual, and narrative methods to study the sexual and reproductive health knowledge and decision-making of marginalized women and youth. From early research with African-American women living in a southern rural community, to work with women using Depo-Provera contraception, and more recent projects working with Latino/a youth to address barriers to sexual communication and sexuality education, Gubrium’s research focus has been on how research participants view their sexual and reproductive health experiences, particularly how they make sense of, respond to, and confront the many in?uences that shape their sexuality. For the past six years Gubrium has conducted ethnographic ?eldwork at an alternative school for pregnant and parenting young women to explore students’ embodied perspectives on contraception, mothering, and sexuality. Gubrium is the author of Participatory Visual and Digital Methods (2013, with Krista Harper). Krista Harper is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Center for Public Policy and Administration (CPPA) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. As an ethnographer, Harper explores issues related to the cultural politics of the environment, cities, and food systems. She is the author of Participatory Visual and Digital Methods (2013, with Aline Gubrium) and of Wild Capitalism: Environmental Activists and Post-Socialist Political Ecology in Hungary (2006). Harper has led projects using participatory digital research methods such as Photovoice to study environmental issues in a Hungarian Roma (Gypsy) neighborhood, school food programs with youth in western Massachusetts, and urban gardening efforts in Lisbon, Portugal. Marty Otanez is an Assistant Professor of Political Ecology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Colorado Denver. To reach broader audiences with his research and advocacy, he creates digital stories and social documentaries. Otanez’s research and advocacy focus on digital stories featuring viral hepatitis and other health issues, and on immigrant experiences in the Rocky Mountain region in Colorado. He also directs the University of Colorado initiative, the Coalition for Excellence in Digital Storytelling. Otanez also studies tobacco industry strategies to undermine natural environments, health policies and human rights, as well as the health and socio-ecological costs of tobacco growing in developing countries. He has co-authored several articles on social responsibility in tobacco prevention in top journals, including Tobacco Control (2011) and American Journal of Public Health (2009), and has produced the videos Up in Smoke (2003) about tobacco farmers and global tobacco companies in Malawi that aired on BBC TV, Thangata: Social Bondage and Big Tobacco in Malawi, and 120,000 Lives (2005), co-produced with Stanton Glantz about smoking in youth-rated movies.