Professor Meagan Call-Cummings (Johns Hopkins University)
Monday 12th May
Challenging knowledge hierarchies with the Youth Research Council

Abstract: In 2021, the Youth Research Council (‘YRC’) was formed to bring together high school students in the Washington, D.C. region of the United States to conduct research on topics important to those youth (‘YRC Fellows’). Since then, YRC Fellows have designed two separate multi-method studies to (1) explore the effects of racial microaggressions on the mental health of their peers and to better understand how young people resist racial microaggressions and their often-deleterious effects on mental health, and (2) to reconceptualize school safety from the perspectives of young people themselves. The purpose of this discussion is to share the YRC’s full process, from formation of research questions to sharing findings in critical and participatory ways, as a model of youth participatory action research (YPAR). In addition to describing the ways in which the YRC embodies a YPAR epistemology, we will discuss several of our creative and arts-based methods.

Biography: Meagan Call-Cummings (PhD, Indiana University Bloomington) is an Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. As a research methodologist, she emphasizes the meaningful inclusion of those who are often excluded from the knowledge creation (research) process – including teachers, young people, and communities of colour – in research through participatory and decolonizing methodologies. She works with the Youth Research Council using youth-led research for change in educational and social policies that affect young people and their communities. The Youth Research Council is currently conducting a multimethod study of the ways young people experience (un)safety in schools.

 

First published: 2 May 2025

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