Calendar: PhD SPEF

This activity is part of the Open Seminar Series of the PhD Programme

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Staying with (Dis)Comfort: Embodied Methodologies and the Work of Becoming a scholar

This seminar foregrounds a decolonial gaze and the notion of epistemic resistance as methodological and conceptual apertures for educational research. From such a line of thinking, knowledge production itself becomes a contested terrain shaped by coloniality, disciplinary habits, and inherited binaries. A decolonial stance here does not merely add perspectives from the “South”. Rather, it interrogates the very epistemic infrastructures that define what counts as data, rigor, participation, and theory. Here, methodology is no longer a neutral technique arising from “pure” cognitive processes, but one that is shaped by embodiment that includes situated, sensing, affective, and relational bodies. Our trajectories, vulnerabilities, privileges, and emotions shape what becomes visible as “data” and how it is represented in scholarly writing. To frame embodiment as methodology means to highlight and to indeed acknowledge the existential dimensions of epistemic work and to resist extractive and overly proceduralised models of inquiry.

Such a stance, and the issues that follow, causes discomfort in the research endeavour and in the work of becoming a scholar. Certainty is lost, networks are loose and uncertainty seems to prevail. And yet, discomfort is not an obstacle to scholarly work but a constitutive dimension of it. Discomfort surfaces when inherited epistemic habits no longer align with lived realities. It appears when embodiment resists abstraction and when relational entanglements unsettle the fiction of the autonomous scholar. What becomes possible when discomfort is cultivated as epistemic resistance?

Drawing on previous research projects and joint contributions, I will make the case that openness, participation, and inclusion are not self-evident, normative dimensions of all educational practices. Rather, they are processes that are constantly enacted through boundary-making practices across timespaces. Given these foci, what becomes visible when we treat embodiment not as a topic but as a condition of knowledge production? How do institutional, epistemic, digital, affective boundaries, selectively allow or restrict participation? And how can a mobile, reflexive, and decolonial gaze help us stay with methodological discomfort rather than seek to resolve it?

The session combines conceptual inputs, dialogical engagement, and collective reflection on participants’ own projects. Participants are invited to bring methodological dilemmas into the conversation as we explore how research practices themselves participate in shaping the very worlds they seek to study.

Readings

Bagga-Gupta, S. & Messina Dahlberg, G. (2021). Disentangling participation across scales. Perspectives on practices of access, communication and inclusion in contemporary lives. In special issue: “Transmethodology. Research Beyond Proceduralism”. Outlines. Critical Practice Studies, 22(2021) https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/12586

Gross, B., & Messina Dahlberg, G. (2025). The premises and promises of diversity-sensitive education beyond boundaries: attempts at decolonizing educational policies, research and practices. In S. Bagga-Gupta (Ed.). The Palgrave Handbook of Decolonizing Educational and Language Sciences. Palgrave.  https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-80322-2_25

Messina Dahlberg, G. (2023). Methodological explorations of the study of access, inclusion and participation in and across digital/physical space and time boundaries. In C. Damşa, A. Rajala, G. Ritella, J. Brouwer (Eds.) Re-theorising Learning and Research Methods in Learning Research. (pp. 174-192). Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003205838-12/methodological-explorations-study-access-inclusion-participation-across-digital-physical-space-time-boundaries-giulia-messina-dahlberg

Short-bio

Giulia Messina Dahlberg is associate professor in Education at the Department of Education and Special Education, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She brings over two decades of experience in education, beginning her career as an upper-secondary school teacher in Falun, Sweden, before moving into university teaching and research. This dual background informs her interest on educational processes, with a particular focus on how institutions can support or hinder interaction, participation and access to a meaningful life. Her research spans three interconnected areas: transitions and widening participation in higher education, technology-mediated and data-driven educational practices and diversity and inclusion, especially regarding language, culture, and policy. Giulia’s work critically examines how people engage with education across diverse settings, from online language classrooms to simulation-based vocational training. 

Giulia has investigated how digital tools and language ideologies shape educational practices and highlights that inclusion and participation do not automatically increase through technology alone. Instead, they are actively constructed and shaped by teachers, students and other actors in a sociomaterial continuum.  

She teaches and supervises students at undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral levels, and is committed to fostering inclusive and intellectually stimulating learning environments. Giulia is also involved in collaborative research projects and cross-sectorial professional networks that explore educational practice and policy.

https://www.gu.se/om-universitetet/hitta-person/giuliamessinadahlberg

https://www.gu.se/en/research/simulator-based-teaching-and-learning-in-vocational-education 

This activity is part of the Open Seminar Series of the PhD Programme.

Please register here

Critical Discourse Analysis in Educational Research: A praxis

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a transdisciplinary approach to empirical research that investigates the linguistic and semiotic mediation of power relations in society. This workshop explores both the potential and the limitations of CDA in understanding and transforming dynamics of inclusion and exclusion within educational contexts.

Following a theoretical and historical introduction to Critical Discourse Analysis within the social sciences, the session will present a research protocol designed to support its systematic and reflexive application in pedagogical research. Drawing on a series of case studies from the international literature, the workshop will demonstrate how this methodology can be used to analyse educational policies related to teacher professionalism, curricula and teaching resources for citizenship education, children’s multimodal learning through play, and practices of critical literacy among adults and adolescents in contexts characterised by sociocultural diversity and complexity.

The seminar aims to provide researchers, educators, and teachers with conceptual and methodological tools to critically interpret the discourses of oppression and emancipation that underpin educational practices and pedagogical research.

The workshop will be supported by text in English but the teacher is open to work in both English and Italian.

Readings

Fabrbro, F. (2024), L'analisi critica del discorso per la ricerca educativa. Teorie, metodi, strumenti. Carocci Editore.

Short-bio

Francesco Fabbro is a Researcher in Experimental Pedagogy at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. His research, published in national and international venues, focuses on empirical research methods in education, intercultural pedagogy, media literacy education, and teacher education. He is co-author, with M. Ranieri and A. Nardi, of Media Education nella scuola multiculturale. Teorie, pratiche, strumenti (ETS, 2019).