The Departments of Anthropology and Education at Maynooth University held a one day conference in March 2025, co-sponsored by the Maynooth University Social Science Institute and the Centre for European and Eurasian Studies. The conference brought together academics and teachers from Ireland, Northern Ireland, the United States, Poland, Czechia, Luxembourg and Uzbekistan for one-day of sharing new approaches to participatory action research (PAR) in social sciences.
Professor Rubin facilitated a workshop with participants using work from her latest book Youth Participatory Action Research in Your Classroom: Teaching and Learning for Active Citizenship. This three-hour session drew on examples of PAR research carried out by young people in Prof. Rubin’s projects. The emphasis was on building concrete research skills and participants took part in hands-on exercises including a jigsaw activity where they learned how to use mapping, interviews, focus groups and surveys in research.
The afternoon session was structured as an open dialogue between participants, social science teachers, student teachers and teacher educators from Ireland, Poland, Czechia, Northern Ireland and Luxembourg. We heard lightning talks from a number of participants sharing their experience of PAR and civic education in their classrooms and research projects. Ideas were mapped on tables and rich discussions ensued.
The conference concluded with a keynote by Beth C. Rubin, in which she illustrated and theorized a “critical ecosystems” view of civic learning as collectively produced, historically and structurally situated, and affective and relational. This expansive understanding of civic learning rooted in findings from a social design project in which civic action research investigations conducted by youth in communities impacted by structural inequality catalysed densely interwoven, affectively infused networks of cross-district interaction and action.
For more information on Beth’s work see her papers here
