Stories of Belonging: Amplifying Voices, Challenging Narratives (Part A)
Hosted by Natalie Kivell, it brings together academics from Victoria University in Melbourne. Chris, who convenes the Community Identity and Displacement Research Network, along with Sam and researchers Rama and Roshani, are joined by three members of Next in Color, a creative collective of African-Australian artists (Geskeva Komba, Ez Eldin Deng and Ruth Nyaruot Ruach). The conversation is organised around “accompaniment” and relationality as a way of doing community research: rather than universities arriving with predetermined projects, the participants describe long-term relationships through which university resources get put behind community aspirations. Much of the episode is grounded in specific projects — Next in Color’s short film Black Gold, shot in the Flemington public housing estates during Melbourne’s lockdowns, their zine series The Coloring Book, and Roshani’s Brimbank Livecommunity radio program with young people in Melbourne’s west.
Co-Hosts / Guests
Christopher Sonn bio (he/Him) was born and raised in South Africa and now lives and works on the lands of the Wurundjeri and Bunurong people of the Kulin Nation. He is a Professor of Psychology working as researcher with the Institute of Health and Sport and the Moondani Balluk Indigenous Centre. Chris have been working over the last few years on various topics related to experiences and meanings of community, identity, belonging, and displacement in the everyday. He is interested in creating responsive, antiracist, and decolonial community and liberation psychologies.
Sam Keast is of Anglo-celtic descent who grew up in Naarm (otherwise known as Melbourne, Australia). His work as an early career researcher and educator is shaped by critical-cultural, transdisciplinary scholarship and praxis that seeks to problematize subjectivities that are normalised by Euro-Western, neoliberal ideologies and that unsettle the authority of dominant forms of psychological knowledge. He is a member of the Community, Identity, and Displacement Research Network (CIDRN) and coordinates the website and other research communication strategies for the network. With an interest in creative methodologies and multimodality in research and knowledge translation/dissemination, he has led the development and design of the internationalcommunitypsychology.com website which is an archive to celebrate the history, work and people from the ICCP conference community.
Roshani Jayawardana (she/her) is a PhD researcher born in so-called Australia to Sri-Lankan-born parents. Growing up and navigating colonial institutions and spaces in Australia herself, as a young researcher she has an interest in understanding the experiences of children of migrants and third culture kids, and enabling them to make sense of their identities, sense of belonging and place. Her work utilises community-engaged methods and creative and audio vehicles to facilitate young people in voicing and propelling these negotiations through stories.
Related reading
Sonn, C., & Baker, A. (2016). Creating inclusive knowledges: Exploring the transformative potential of arts and cultural practice. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 20(3), 215–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2015.1047663
Agung-Igusti, R.P., Sonn, C.C., Dau, A., Deng, E.E., Komba, G., Akoul, N., & Ruach, R.N. (2021). Colour Between the Lines: Self Determination and the Creation of Settings as Resistance to Structural Violence. Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice, 12(2), 1 – 19. Retrieved Day/Month/Year, (http://www.gjcpp.org/).
Sonn, C. C., Baker, A. M., & Agung-Igusti, R. P. (2021). Promoting Epistemic Justice: Community Arts, Identity and Belonging Among African Diaspora in Australia. In G. Stevens & C. C. Sonn (Eds.), Decoloniality and Epistemic Justice in Contemporary Community Psychology (pp. 141–157). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72220-3_8
