In February 2025, the Polson Group of 20 doctoral students partnered with glocolearning at Cornell University for a two-day workshop on transforming systems through participatory methodologies.
The guiding question was: “How can participatory research methods contribute to transformative processes within our doctoral work?” The workshop explored both the opportunities and the challenges of embedding interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches into action research.
Key Takeaways
- Collaboration is rooted in trust, it means conducting research with communities, not on them;
- Placing diverse knowledge systems at the center involves critically evaluating dominant paradigms, and recognizing other ways of knowing and valuing;
- Collaborative processes require courage, embracing diverse tools and methods, shared spaces and experiences, and the uncertainties that come with transformation.
Day 1: Rethinking Participation in Research
The opening panel tackled the question: What does participatory research look like in practice? What challenges come with it, and how does it compare to traditional qualitative methods? Panelists from diverse disciplines across Cornell shared real-world insights, such as how climate change is shaping agroecological systems in rural livelihoods in Mexico to what resilience looks like in practice in Indonesia. Our panelists included:
→ Zulfirman (Zul) Rahyantel, a PhD student focusing on marine conservation, environmental governance, and the resilience of small island and coastal communities to climate change in Indonesia. Zul’s research examines community engagement and sustainable natural resource management in eastern Indonesia.
→ Mai Ichihara, a PhD student exploring the intersection of regenerative agriculture, rural livelihoods, and globalized food markets. Mai’s research examines how soil health-centered food production systems shape small-scale farmers’ resilience and participation in emerging market-based sustainability initiatives.
→ Maria Boa Alvarado, a PhD Candidate interested in climate-resilient and sustainable food systems. Her research interests include rural development, social change, and the co-creation of knowledge to advance food systems transitions.
→ Matias Flores González, a PhD Candidate focusing on the history and politics of community engagement in higher education, particularly in Latin America. His research examines the evolving role of universities in social transformation and decolonial approaches to knowledge production.
Our discussion centered around describing how participatory research seeks to disrupt extractive models of academia—where researchers observe, extract, and publish, often without community involvement. Instead, as a collective group, we found a need for a fundamental power shift: working with communities as co-creators of knowledge. Done well, it can foster deeper insights, challenge extractive research norms, and even reshape institutions. But we found that it is not that simple. Key tensions emerged, such as power imbalances within our fields, institutional and funding constraints, and differences across disciplines.
“We all have ideal visions of participatory research. But once we get to the field, those ideals meet reality—and that’s where the learning begins.”
Misconceptions about participatory research surfaced, especially the assumption that it looks the same across disciplines or contexts, or that it is interchangeable with qualitative methods. In reality, it takes many forms. A participatory project in public health will look vastly different from one in environmental conservation, and what works in Latin America may not translate to Southeast Asia. In truth, we found that participatory research is context-specific, dynamic, and often an art
One persistent challenge that came up was power dynamics. While participatory research aims to redistribute authority, researchers often still hold the purse strings, control the framing, and write the final paper. So how do we genuinely share power?
Ultimately, we found that participatory research is not a one-size-fits-all approach. It is a continuous negotiation between researchers and communities, between theory and practice. While no model is perfect, we have a responsibility to intentionally engage with the communities we serve, going beyond merely avoiding harm.
Day 2: Tools, Backcasting, and Visioning the Future
Day two began with a deep dive into diverse participatory tools and approaches—including art-based methods, games, and storytelling. The aim was to facilitate the sharing of effective practices and tools for participatory research within an interactive learning environment. The discussion featured contributions about transdisciplinary approaches from our panelist:
- Carolina Osorio Gil a Cornell’s PhD Candidate, her research focuses on the general themes of knowledge, power, and epistemic justice. She shared insights of her collaborative research project with campesina/o communities in Colombia.
- Federico Andreotti, Lecturer and Researcher at the Wageningen University, his conducting research and teaching about games design and play and participatory research methods to explore futures farming and food systems.
- Osvel Hinojosa-Huerta, Director, Coastal Solutions Fellows Program of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Shared insights of the Coastal Solutions Fellows Program that support early-career planners, developers, and scientists from Latin America to collaboratively design and implement new solutions to tackle current challenges facing coastal ecosystems and communities.
- Travis Johns, sound artist and Cornell’s visiting lecturer, who shared his experiences in collaborative art processes in Central America and the power of music and storytelling.
The focus then shifted to a hands-on backcasting workshop, an increasingly applied method to support systems thinking, cross-disciplinarity and transformative change in strategic planning. Backcasting is a future-oriented planning method that starts by envisioning a desirable future, and then maps backward to identify the steps, actors, and strategies needed to get there.
We explored backcasting as a participatory tool for:
- Co-creating visions and pathways
- Centering local voices in systems thinking
- Supporting strategic action across disciplines
Our workshop focused on a case study on the future of participatory research. We created vision maps and identified key assumptions, barriers, and levers for change. Our key questions included:
- What does a thriving participatory research culture look like in the 2030s?
- Who are the key stakeholders in this vision?
- What are the bottlenecks—and the enabling conditions—for success?
After we built our pathway map and engaged in important and fruitful discussion, we found that some applications of backcasting could be:
- To define a desired research outcome and map steps backward to achieve it
- To co-create research questions with communities
- To develop future scenarios and test strategies across contexts
- To design interventions and trace their long-term impacts
- To involve stakeholders in refining findings and ensuring relevance
- To align academic work with advocacy and systems transformation
Reflections
This workshop reminded us that participatory research is not just a method—it is a process and a committment. It challenges us to reflect on our roles and positionality, confront and dismantle extractive practices, and reimagine research as an equitable, co-created, and transformative process. “Our journey ahead is uncertain, but filled with possibilities. And we are not walking it alone.”
The discussion featured by contributions from Mai Ichihara, Zulfirman Rahyantel, Carolina Osorio Gil, Federico Andreotti, Osvel Hinojosa-Huerta, Travis Johns, Natalia Correa Sánchez, Jonas Adriaensens, Matías G. Flores, Megan Hay, advised by Daniel Mason-D'Croz and co-organized by Maria Boa, Francoise Cattaneo, and Kristina Sokourenko.
