TRIP · 2025-11-06 · 47 min
Performance ethnography combines ethnographic methods - observation, interviewing, participation - with embodied performance to deepen understanding of culture. At its core, it asks: what knowledge emerges when we inhabit and perform the cultures we study? Dr. Mahmoud explains this to students through practical classroom exercises, such as staging ethnographic sites like record shops or transit systems to experientially understand cultural spaces. But the episode's deeper focus is on positionality: teaching researchers to interrogate who they are in relation to their subject, what privileges or distances they bring, and how to build ethical bridges across difference. Mahmoud describes how she integrates this into her teaching by having students examine the policies, redlining, and structural inequities that have shaped the spaces and communities they study. She shares a powerful example of assigning a play by an indigenous playwright to a class that included a student from that same tribal nation - a student who had never before read anyone from her own people in an academic context. Both instructors emphasize that inclusivity isn't just about diversity of representation; it requires understanding why certain people have been historically excluded from academic canons and actively dismantling those barriers. The conversation touches on the political attack on ethnic studies, gender studies, and performance studies - fields that center positionality and relationality - and proposes that critical thinking and empathy should be formal requirements across all disciplines, including professional training for roles like law enforcement.
Hosted by Kristin Spraggins and Katrina Noelle. The show scores 64.0/100 on substance across its analysed episodes. See the full show profile.
Performance ethnography combines ethnographic methods like observation and interviewing with embodied performance to understand culture more deeply. While ethnography observes and analyzes culture, performance ethnography also asks researchers to perform or stage the culture they study - such as recreating a record shop or performing choreography - to access embodied knowledge and insights that observation alone cannot reveal.
Jasmine teaches students to examine their positionality - their identity, privileges, and relationship to their research subject - before and during fieldwork. She has students identify points of connection and departure with their subjects, examine the historical policies that shaped those spaces, and make ethical choices about how to build bridges across difference rather than assuming neutrality.
A student from the tribal nation of the playwright had never, across her entire academic career, read anyone from her own people in an academic classroom. Seeing her people's stories valued in the curriculum affirmed that her community was worthy of study and positioned her as someone who could belong in academia, not just be an observer of it.
The exercise uses a chart where, before interviewing someone, you list their identities and your own, note your responses to them, then identify points of connection and departure. This creates awareness of what you share with your research subject and what bridges you need to build, making positionality explicit before fieldwork begins.
These fields center positionality, relationality, and critical thinking about systems of inequality - ways of thinking that challenge existing power structures. Mahmoud argues that the attack reflects resistance to the empathetic, communitarian, and critically reflective worldview these fields cultivate.
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
“Inclusivity isn’t charity - it’s intelligence" For our season 6 finale, TRIP passes over the mic to returning guest Nikki Yeboah , Assistant Professor at the University of Washington. She’s joined by her colleague, Dr. Jasmine Mahmoud , Assistant Professor of Theatre history and Performance Studies at the University of Washington, whose work explores the intersection of theater, culture, and social justice. Together, Nikki and Jasmine unpack performance ethnography - a research approach that merges observation with embodied experience - and how it can deepen inclusivity in both academia and applied research. This episode examines positionality, the ethics of “who we are” in relation to our subjects, and how performance itself can enrich the context of research. Tune in to hear actionable insights for conducting more inclusive, embodied, and ethical research, including: How embodiment reveals what words can’t - using performance to uncover deeper human truths. Why inclusive research requires examining the structures and histories that keep some voices out of the conversation.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: Welcome back, Tripp listeners. Boy, do we have a treat for you. For our last episode of the season, we are passing the mic to actually one of our guests from season one. Nikki Aboa, since joining the episode on our first season, is at the University of Washington with a 10 year track focusing mostly on performance ethnography. And she's brought along her colleague Jasmine Mahmoud to share their experiences.
Speaker B: And I'm so excited to learn what performance ethnography is and how academia is approaching ethnography these days. Because I think ethnography is a tactic, a methodology that we use a lot in the research and insights space. But it often means different things depending on who's doing it and for what use case. So I'm going to be listening for how it's being taught these days, what adding the word performance to performance ethnography really means and what we can learn from that as researchers. You're listening to trip, the Research Inclusion Project. We're your hosts, Katrina Noel and Kristen Spraggins.
Speaker C: Hello and welcome to tripp. My name is Nikki, Nikki Yeboa, if you want to Google me. And this is a non hostile takeover of trip. I say non hostile because we just thought it would be fun. I was on the first season of Trip, episode two, which is arguably the best episode in the series and had such a great time, I thought, why not do it again? And if I was going to do it again, Kristin and Katrina were like, why don't we shake things up a little bit? And so here we are. I will be hosting today and, and interviewing a friend and colleague of mine, Jasmine Mahmood. At the time I was interviewed by Katrina and Kristin for season one, I was an assistant professor in the communications school at San Jose State. Now I'm with the University of Washington and so is Jasmine. Jasmine Mahmoud is an assistant professor of performance studies at the University of Washington. There she uses ethnography as a method to think about the relationship between theater and gentrification. One of the classes she teaches at uw, which is wildly popular, is performance ethnography, which, don't worry, I will have her explain. Jasmine's, uh, a superstar. Just this year she won a teaching award, a, uh, distinguished teaching award at the University of Washington. She's also an arts journalist as well as a scholar, and she founded the Seattle Arts Voter Guide. Also, Jasmine serves as a governor appointed Washington State Arts Council commissioner. So without further ado. Hi, Jasmine. What's up?
Speaker D: Hi, Nikki. I'm okay. I, I think I told you I'm very jet lagged at the moment, but otherwise, I'm good.
Speaker C: So, full disclosure. Jasmine and I went to grad school together at Northwestern and now are, uh, teaching at the University of Washington together, which I should say is super rare. All right, Jasmine, so what is performance ethnography? Explain it to me like, I'm in high school.
Speaker D: Yeah. So ethnography, I think. Let's break it down those two words. Let's start with ethnography. Ethnography I kind of think of as, like, cultural anthropology. Or put differently for those that watch Sex and the City, like the first season of Sex and the City, where Carrie Bradshaw is, like, running around New York and trying to find out, like, what is the culture of single women in New York City? What is the culture of single men in New York City? And so ethnography is a method. A method, a way of collecting and analyzing data that is concerned with understanding the culture of a people. You can do ethnography of your local coffee shop, and you might go to the coffee shop every day, take field notes. You might interview the people that work there or customers. Uh, you might even work at the coffee shop as a barista for a month or a year as part of your ethnography. So ethnography is a method of understanding culture, and that, um, is discerned by observing that culture, taking field notes, often participating in that culture, often interviewing people of the culture. So that's the first half of it. And the second half is this word performance, which defined by many scholars, um, including. I'm m. Kind of paraphrasing a scholar, Ellen Diamond. We can think of performance as embodied actions witnessed or watched, framed in time and space. And so putting those two things together, performance ethnography is a method of observing culture through performance. A lot of performance ethnographers use performance as a way to observe culture. So in my class, I'll have the students observe, observe of cyto culture. They'll do an ethnography of maybe the light rail, public transit, or the coffee shop. Or I had a student who's Laotian who studied a Laotian temple in the Seattle area. But then also as part of their studying the culture, analyzing the culture, and presenting on the culture, they'll perform the side of culture. So a few years ago, I had a student who did an ethnography of a record shop in Seattle. And as part of their final presentation, they staged the classroom like the record shop. Um, I've seen students do bookstores or theaters, and they'll stage the classroom to be like the theater. So we'll experience that culture? Um, yeah. So, again, it's a way of studying culture, but it also involves the body to further study the culture and to think about the embodied knowledge and the culture, and some performance ethnography, particularly studies like performance culture. So, like, what does it mean to study, um, the culture of, like, ballet dancers or modern jazz dancers? You can observe them, you can interview them, but what might it mean also to, like, perform the choreography that they do as well? What different knowledge comes from that embodiment? Um, as well? So those are some of the things that performance ethnography considers.
Speaker C: Awesome. Thank you for that explanation. All right. You kind of talked about your classroom a bit, right? I'm curious, in your classroom, how do you train the next generation of researchers to be more inclusive in their research?
Speaker D: I think about this in at least two ways. I think, first, implicitly, I think about the timeline behind that word inclusivity. So I do. I do teach some, um, I teach a racial equity workshop for an arts organization in Seattle. And in that workshop, I give a history of the words diversity, equity, inclusion in grief. Diversity is a word like emerges in the 90s or in the 80s and 90s. Jeff Chang, a scholar, writes about how diversity as a word emerges 20 years after the Civil Rights act is passed, the Voting Rights act is passed, and also the act that's passed that brings different, um, groups of immigrants to the United States. And then inclusion as a word pops up in the 2000s, mostly at the city level, where cities are starting to think about ways of being more equitable, being more just and fair, but also being more inclusive, having more people at the table. We often think about inclusive, this word, as more people at the table. But the other side that we need to think about is, like, why were people not allowed at the table? Um, what are the policies, rules, social norms, social scripts that discriminated against people? And so when I think about inclusivity, I think about those things. I have students think about those things. What are the rules and laws and policies today and yesterday that's discriminated against people? And so one thing that we do in my theater classroom, which might seem odd for a theater classroom, but almost always we're learning about the history of, like, redlining and restrictive covenants and those policies that discriminated black people, other people of color, from moving to places, owning homes, et cetera, and how that affects where theater was then and where theater was now. Um, so similarly, um, when I'm teaching classes on ethnography, um, classes that look at specific sites of culture where we think about, what are the policies that frame those sites of culture. Policies, um, that allowed certain people to be in that place, policies that discriminated against people in that place. That's the first thing. And the second thing, um, I do. Influenced by performance ethnographers, including your amazing advisor, DSU Weenie Madison, is I have students think about their positionality. Positionality is kind of an academic word to think about. Who are you in dialogue with your research? And I think it's important to think about that because so much of many people's assumptions of academics is. It's very, like, dry. It's very objective.
Speaker C: Objective. The big O.
Speaker D: The big O. It really is this big O. And I always ask students, like, why do you think it's objective? And, you know, what is the relationship of this person who did this work? So we think about that, like, with inclusivity. I try to have students think about, like, who are you in dialogue with your research? And that also, I think, is inclusive. Because especially now, so many students are like, I'm a white man. I can't study African dance. And I'm like, why not? How are you related to African dance? How are you not related to it? I think it's actually a really deeply inclusive way to say that you really can study anything. But to be ethical, you need to think about your relationship to it. So those are the kind of things I think about is like, yeah, who are you in dialogue with your work? And I also think it's good for students who feel like they have a close connection. So, like, a lot of my work is. I do a lot of writing about, like, black feminist artists. And I have to think about, who am I in dialogue with this work? I grew up in Southern California. I grew up, you know, I'm in my 40s. I grew up kind of middle class, upper middle class. I study a lot of black women who don't have that same background as me. What are my ethics in doing that? Um, is a question I ask myself. Again, it's not to say I can't do it, it's saying, I can do it, but to be more ethical and more inclusive. I'm always asking myself, what is my relationship to the side of research? And sometimes my relationship is like, I really like this work, and I don't know anything else about it. I really, really like this work. But I think stating that is a really great way to, um, create a way to kind of understand more currents in research towards inclusivity.
Speaker C: I have this exercise. I don't Know if I've. Have I told you about the positionality check exercise?
Speaker D: No, no, no. I would love to hear that.
Speaker C: It's like a chart where before you go out and interview someone, you, in one column, write down what you know of their identity and also of the research matter. So say you're. You are studying homelessness, and you are studying a black trans youth who is homeless. Right. So you would put, like, what is your gender? What is your sexuality? What is your race? Have you ever been homeless? Do you know someone that's. All of that goes into the column. The next column asks you to, um, note, like, your responses to those.
Speaker D: Oh, that's great. Yeah.
Speaker C: And then you look for points of connection and points of departure, and it just begins the conversation as to, you know, what do you have in common with this person and what don't you. And what are you going to do to build that bridge?
Speaker D: Yeah. Can I steal that?
Speaker C: Steal it? Steal away.
Speaker D: I like that, your responses to that, because I think sometimes we don't like. Again, like, a lot of stuff I write about, I like, but sometimes I'm like, oh, I don't. I don't like that. And I think it's sometimes good to, like, gauge, like, oh, this person engages with, like, whatever the macabre, or they use, like, blood or, like, fluid in their work. I'm like, I don't like this, but I think. But I like their work. And so I love that. Like, what are your responses to it? In ways in which you might not be aware of. That's great, Nikki. I would love to take that extra.
Speaker C: Oh, take it and run.
Speaker D: Thank you.
Speaker C: It's all yours. Yeah. So you have them think about their positionality. I remember, like, I feel. I'm, um, feeling old, but when we started grad school, like, 15 or so years ago, I found that students, white students at the time, didn't really see themselves as embodying any kind of identity. They were like, the racially neutral.
Speaker D: Yes.
Speaker C: Or if you're a man, also a neutral position, et cetera, if you are, uh, straight also, you know, the default neutral. And I feel like things have changed.
Speaker D: Yes.
Speaker C: Do you think so?
Speaker D: Yes. I think in certain disciplines. I think things have changed in certain disciplines, I think because of performance studies. And I know we, uh, Nikki and I taught this class, Performing Social justice, where we taught that article by Carrie Sandal, who's a disabled scholar and writes about disability theater. But Carrie writes about how this, like, idea of a neutral body, like, in acting, there's idea of actor, neutral and she's like, what is this? What does this idea of neutral body mean to a disabled body? So I think it has changed. I think what's not frustrating, but I think our work as professors is that with students coming in, it hasn't changed. Like a lot of students coming in, I'll show them, they'll assume that academic writing can't be poetic, or academic writing can't be personal, or that good research can't be all those things, poetic, personal, positional. And I'm like, why do you think that? And so for me what's interesting is that what is framing what incoming like college students think is quote unquote academic. But no, I think you're right. I think it's changed. I think it's changed in kind of like the critical fields that are on attack right now. Like any of the studies, Performance studies, gender studies, ethnic studies, critical studies, critical theory.
Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, any. All of the ones that are uh, under attack. Yep, all um, the ones that are meant to be inclusive.
Speaker D: Meant to be inclusive, yeah. And I think the follow up question is like, well, why are they under, you know, why are they under attack at this moment?
Speaker C: Want to answer that?
Speaker D: I think because, well one, I think because yes, there is not that they not. I don't think that they necessarily support a politic, but there's like one of the assumptions under girding it is a uh, is about like inclusivity, is about positionality, is about relationality. I think what's really beautiful about positionality is it's actually not just about who am I in dialogue with who I'm studying, but it's like what is your relationship? And I feel like that can build a really beautiful, communitarian, empathetic world at a time in which politics are against that. But I also think that way of thinking is doing all the things that like I think college is, is the charge of college is the critical thinking, is the process, is the empathy, is the like revision. Like all of the, those questions that a lot of the studies fields ask, Performance studies, gender studies, et cetera, produce a way of thinking that is like deeply critical. And I feel like that critical thinking is um, ultimately that's what's under attack right now.
Speaker C: I mean it, it doesn't escape me that you know, at the same time as they are defunding all of the studies that you, you identified, um, they're also trying to put more money towards blue collar labor, which is absolutely necessary of course, world we live in, but also doesn't really engage with Those things at all.
Speaker D: Yeah. We're in a world where I think certain types of labor are positioned not to engage where like they could it. Like this is random. On my, the trip I was on with my family when we were in Copenhagen, Denmark, we took just uh, like the hop on hop off bus. We went to, we went to Tivoli Gardens, which like is the blueprint for Disneyland. And so we took the hop on hop off bus there and it was like listening to like the audio guide. And of course this is very like, maybe this is, this is like you know, approved by the Denmark government. But one of the things the audio guy said is that given the standard of living in Denmark, that there's no jobs that are considered like quote unquote beneath.
Speaker C: Mhm.
Speaker D: So any job you do in Denmark is like an admirable job. And I just, I remember thinking about that like, and like one, what is the like economic policy behind that? But also like, how does, how is education in dialogue with that? Like, what might it mean for us to expect all types of workers, especially blue collar workers, to have a critical thinking how they do? Right? They definitely do in many ways.
Speaker C: Um, yeah, yes, they definitely do. But to not formally, to not formally include that in how they learn.
Speaker D: That's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not formal.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker D: To not formally even, I think not to touch the third rail. But I'm, I um, don't know. But I like, what are the qualifications for like police in this country? Right? Like, I'm like, why? I always wanted like what it means for like all police officers to have to major in like American studies, gender studies, critical race studies, African American studies. Like how would that change police force if they were asked to do that? Much like most, most doctors, even if they don't get a biology major, Most doctors, even if a doctor is an art history major, we know they've taken minimum amount of biology classes. Well, what might it mean for a police officer to take performance ethnography, to take, take performance studies, to take gender studies?
Speaker C: Was there a moment for you, either professionally or personally, that made you understand just how important it was like inclusivity, representation.
Speaker D: So I grew up like pretty well off. My parents are both physicians though. You know, my parents also kind of grew up in a really deeply racist America. My mom was from Jackson, Mississippi. My dad's from New York, New Jersey. I grew up in California. And even with all of that, even with me kind of growing up very well off, when I was living in New York, a friend of mine was a Performance artist. And I went to his show, and at the show, there was a woman that I knew from Harvard who. Amar Gurte Tago Khatun. She's a. Yeah. Ghanaian American performance historian. And she was doing some kind of, like, I think, performance ethnography. But she introduced herself as, like, oh, um, I'm. I'm Amma. I'm getting my PhD in Performance Studies. And it literally. I was like, oh. It was like, one of those moments. I was like, oh, like, oh, that could be a path for me. And so it was just literally seeing her, seeing this black woman, um, do this performance, this, like, academic performance, really, like, planted a seed for me. But again, with all the privileges I was afforded in my life, I never, ever, ever, ever, ever thought I could be a professor until I saw her. I think about that when I teach. I taught a class a few years ago, Women of Color, Queer of Color Theater. And it was a pretty, like, big. Like, 25 students, a pretty big class. And I, you know, was looking for kind of a little bit of paint by numbers, making sure that we had a play by an African American or woman played by queer women. Queer of color women, uh, Latina women, indigenous M women, Asian women, et cetera. And I remember I was like. I wanted to teach at least two plays by indigenous playwrights. And so I kind of. But it was kind of random. I kind of was in that frantic, like, I gotta find the play. And I just, like, looked through something, and I just, like. I, like, read a page of it before, and I was like, okay, we're gonna read this play. So we read this play, Vicky Ramirez's standoff on Highway 37, about, like, an Indigenous community protecting themselves in a contemporary time, protecting themselves from enrochment today. And one of my students in the class was from the same tribal nation as the playwright. And, like. And I like. And I remember her saying to me, I have never in my academic career. I think she had never read. I think she, like, had read only one indigenous person in her entire academic career, and she's in the humanities, and she had never read anyone at college from her tribal nation. And I just remember, like, her saying that. And it, like, hit me like a. Like a positive cannonball in my gut, like, oh, my God, like, this is so important. And also, it made me feel not bad. But I was like, I picked this play kind of quote, unquote, randomly. What might it mean for me to be even more intentional? And how could that, like, affect students, uh, more? But just, like, the look of her Face and, like, the change of her orientation of, like, knowing that her people, who, of course, are smart and storied and have amazing history and are part of the. She explained, we're part of the, I think, seven treaties. Nation of indigenous people in kind of upstate New York area. Um, but her people are worthy of study. And how important that is to know that her people are worthy of study. Her people's culture are important enough to be, like, studied and valued in an academic classroom.
Speaker C: I had that. I had a huge chip on my shoulder when we were in grad school about studying Ghana. For this reason, thinking that it wasn't worthy of, I came in with, uh, a proposal to study the US Military. Yes. I was gonna study the US Military. Wow. I forgot that until this instant, um, because I thought that's what's gonna get me in the door, you know?
Speaker D: Yes, yes.
Speaker C: Um, I never thought that they would encourage me to actually do something that mattered to me on a personal level. And so your story really resonates with me, the not thinking you are worthy of even being in the canon, let alone being in the room.
Speaker D: Yeah.
Speaker C: Where the canon is being read.
Speaker D: And your point is so interesting too. It's about, like. Your point is kind of about these academic strategies that we, like, assume.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker D: It's like, oh, I'm going to a top university. My assumption is I need to take this class. I need to say these things. But. And then, like, who do those things center and decenter as part of it, and they often de. Center us and the people that are minoritized. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker C: We've talked about kind of opening up our students to kind of more inclusive practices. I'm curious if you have a strategy that you use in the classroom to ensure that, like, broader accessibility and participation for your students.
Speaker D: I should say I've learned a lot from you, Nikki. And I want to actually platform one of the things that you taught me. Those pretty exhaustive, like, reading logs, which are amazing. And I'm going to do them from now on. So Nikki has this amazing assignment. Uh, so often when you teach, you'll do, like, a weekly discussion post. And I used to do that. I was like, write a quote in question. But the problem with that, especially in the era of ChatGPT, is that students can phone it in, or they can read the first page of something and be like, here's a quote I like, and here's a question, and you don't really know the depth. And so one of Nikki's amazing assignments was to have students do a Reading log, were they really, I think at like minimum, like I don't know, 250, 500 words entry per text, where they're having the notable quotables or having critical questions, et cetera. And so I took her format of that. And this past spring I taught a performance art class where we both were reading about performance art, histories of performance art, but also making performance art. And I had my students do a reading log and they had to do a reading log of every text. And so I I'll say like five things, but they had to like engage. Like who, like look up beyond the text, who is this author? Of course, like quotes. They found interesting concepts, they found interesting methods, discussion questions and a few more things. And so that was one thing. And I say that that's accessible because I think that sometimes when we think about accessibility, we think a little bit about like lowest common denominator. But it's not that like I think accessibility is about ways in to really be rigorous with engagement. And so I do reading logs or kind of discussion posts, I'll pull from their reading logs, I'll look through them and I'll pull out discussion questions they asked and then use that to engage the course, to show them that their knowledge is really valuable. A lot of my attempts at accessibility are really attempts at like layering how they think and showing them that like a lot of thinking and analysis is processual. So we might have initial verbal check ins of the reading, a question about the reading, and then that's like expanded upon through like embodied activities. It might be expanded on through a question from a student. It might be expanded on through engaging with an artwork. It might be expanded on with doing all of that and then turning that into an essay or a final project. And so a lot of my classroom I really like to layer on how they think to show them that it's not about being that very like cinematic quote, unquote, like smart person in the moment. Instead it's about a sustained engagement with content, with what we're reading, with performance, a sustained way to support how you're thinking and how you're working through work. I really like to build or scaffold assignments so often for final projects in the class. We will have like engage a bunch of final work. We'll have engaged a bunch of types of performance for this performance art class. And then I'll have students kind of write a proposal for themselves, research other people that are doing work, present the work, and then write about what they presented and reflect on it. And so in an accessible way. It's not just about, like, that one moment of presentation, which is really important, but it's also about the things that surround it. Like, what does it mean to, like, do a work that was kind of crappy? What does it mean to, like, to present something and you're like, oh, that was crappy, but then to write about it and reflect about it versus to say, like, oh, my God, everything has to be at this one moment in time.
Speaker C: Yeah. I really like that as a process. And when you raise the fact that you bring the discussion questions that they asked into the classroom and have them, it kind of elevates their voice a bit and also allows them to get real questions answered.
Speaker D: Yes. Yeah.
Speaker C: As opposed to assuming or having them be the smartest person in the room.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker C: And I think even as a researcher outside of the institution of academia, there is this way in which just centering a person's voice does a lot.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker C: You know, just taking the time to, uh, elevate their perspective or to take on what they say, repeat it back to make them feel like their voice matters. That is being listened to, that is being engaged and will continue to be engaged. I think it does a lot in terms of just ensuring that people actually feel included. Like, feel it.
Speaker D: Yeah.
Speaker C: As opposed to are named as, like. Instead of naming this as an inclusive space. People need to feel that.
Speaker D: Right. Yeah, I think that's completely right. I did a workshop two years ago at a theater company in Philadelphia called Pig Iron, and they had guest speakers every day, and it was about ensemble theater. And the last day, I'm forgetting the person's name, but they are a. I think they're originally from Mexico, a Mexican theater director that they're now at nyu. They talked about how they tell their students that their students are their current and future colleagues, and they teach because they have the pleasure of meeting their students as their current future colleagues. So I've taken that. I put that in my syllabus, I cite them. But I think it's that same thing where I'm m. Like, I value how you're thinking. And they realize that they're not just. It's not just about, like, answering, quote, unquote, the right question, but instead, like, that their voice, to your point, really matters. And the feeling of their voice mattering.
Speaker C: Yeah. That what you also just said about not about answering the right question. Even in an. In an ethnography, people feel this burden. Right. When you are interviewing someone, people feel like, I have to do this.
Speaker A: Right.
Speaker C: Yes. Yes. And Especially if you come from a marginalized group. Doing things right usually means not being yourself.
Speaker D: Yes.
Speaker C: It means taking on a voice that you think you know is the neutral voice, is the valued voice in society. So creating space for people to not feel burdened to do things right, but to just really lean into who they are. There is no right or wrong response. I want to get to know you. I want to center you. I want your perspective. I think really does something.
Speaker D: Yes.
Speaker C: Speaking about the interview, is there an example of a research method that helped you uncover insights that you wouldn't have found otherwise?
Speaker D: I'll start first with, like, a theory that has been pretty big in our field of performance studies. And then I'll maybe move into a method. So a scholar named Diana Taylor, who's from Mexico but now lives in the United States, she wrote this book, um, called the Archive and the Repertoire. And it really changed our field. So the premise of this book is often when we think about knowledge, we. We think about archival knowledge. I have, like, things around me, like, behind me is a bookshelf. We think about books, we think about papers. We even think about, like, bones. And she says that the word the archive comes from the Greek arche, which means a place where things can be stored. So we think about knowledge as, uh, items and a place where things that can be stored, books in a library, maybe bones of dinosaurs that they dug up in a field, dusty letters, et cetera. And her point is that, yes, this is a valuable side of knowledge, but also there's another side of knowledge that we're kind of ignoring. And the other side of knowledge is what's called the repertoire. And, uh, the repertoire are embodied actions. It's right now how we're sitting and kind of our body language. It's how this is something I studied in my own work. How people walk the way people walk in different cities. It's dances. And so she says that the archive is a value set of knowledge in the academy, but we also need to recognize the repertoire as a set of knowledge. And also you recognize that you need a repertoire. You need an embodiment to access the archive. And so I think reading about that and learning about that kind of drastically changed the way I thought about the world, the way I thought about knowledge and how people have intelligence. They have knowledge that exists within their body that's often not valued because it's things that, quote, unquote, can't be written down or can't fully be understood through writing. Johnny Saldana has this book called Ethnotheater where he's kind of talking about this, and he has an exercise where you think of three people. I'm going to forget who they are. It's like your high school best friend, someone from your family, and a teacher that you really admired. And you sit as the high school best friend, you sit as yourself, the teacher, yourself, the family member, et cetera. You walk as the person, et cetera, et cetera. So inspired by him and plenty of other scholars, we do a lot of embodied activities where we think about culture not just as kind of written or stored, but also as embodied. And taking that a step further, in this performance orthography class, all the students interview someone at their side of culture, and they'll read through the transcript. And we do some ways of analyzing what's called coding the transcript. But we also do exercises where they embody the interview. So they'll embody an excerpt of the interview. They'll embody the body language of the interview, the walk of the person that they interviewed, to have them think about what is knowledge that's beyond just what the person said. Um, and so I think that's just really, really valuable to think about how knowledge is not just what people say or write. Knowledge is not just what's stored. It can be stored, but it also exists within our bodies. Even now, right now, Nikki, you have your hand on your chin. I'm talking with my hands. You're giving a cute little grin. Like all of these things are signaling things about our conversation that's beyond the transcript. And thank God for a transcript. But the transcript of this interview will
Speaker C: say, I think this is super important. And I teach this in my classes. And I also, um, when I teach workshops for, like, corporate entities outside of academia about how to conduct research, how to conduct, conduct ethnography, I often talk about the fact that if you are focusing just on what is being said, you are missing, like, critical parts of how we communicate. Yeah, everybody knows that as human beings, we don't communicate using just words.
Speaker A: We.
Speaker C: Yeah, we give certain looks that let you know, our tone of voice. I say to my students, there's a difference between no and toe. There's a huge difference between those two things right when they're being communicated to you. And so to limit yourself to a transcript, to limit yourself to what is being said, means you're limiting yourself to the literal. And that is just not how we function as. As humans. That's just not how we communicate. And if you want real insight into what people are thinking, what people are desiring what people are curious about, you have to go beyond the transcript. You have to think about all of the ways in which they're performing themselves to you, including how they're dressing, how they're addressing you, what the environment is like. There's just so much more that goes into how we communicate.
Speaker D: Yeah, I wanted to say too, Nikki, when you were talking about kind of the way you teach and kind of paying attention to things that people leave out, I feel like that's actually the kernel of inclusivity. I think, again, especially in this moment, inclusivity is being, like, poo pooed on. But something I think about all the time is how, like, those that kind of poo poo on inclusivity or think that inclusivity is dumb are actually making themselves dumber because of the ways in which they are excluding ways of thinking. I think at its best, inclusivity is about, um, centering those ways of thinking that are not centered, but also centering ways of thinking that best support the research that one is doing. And so, again, if one is doing research on culture, and you might say, oh, it's so dumb to pay attention to someone's, like, makeup or clothing or body language. But no, like, how am I paying attention to the way someone walks, the lipstick that they wear, how they move their body? What does that open up in your research? Questions that's not answered in other, quote, unquote, like traditional M means.
Speaker C: I want to ask you one final question and then, and then just give the audience some takeaways. I know we're academics, and I know that this might be a little different from you, but I want you to have a sense of how what we teach in the classroom might improve your own practice outside of it. Um, but the final question I have for you, Jasmine, is if we look ahead 10 years, what would your vision or your desire be for the future of representative research?
Speaker D: Um, I think this is kind of where I am right now with my own both, like, personal, academic, and also political goals. I'm a huge arts advocate, and one of the ways I think about representative research or kind of is the ways in which the arts are so, so underfunded in our country. This is not just the National Endowment for the Arts and the neh, which is making cuts that affects arts researchers, but also the ways in which we, like, do not support artists as laborers, arts workers, arts access. And so I think that's one pillar of this question. Um, one answer is, I would love to see a world where research is. Well, there's Already research like we already know, the research already shows that we need to be a more arts rich society and that will include outcomes to education, to empathy, to community building, to joy, to belonging, to health. There's a lot of research coming out that's saying the most successful treatment for many types of depression is dance. And there's something called Dancerx that's emerging right now to pay dance instructors to give folks dance lessons, ongoing dance lessons as a, as a, uh, as a treatment to certain mental health issues.
Speaker C: Just to add to what you said about dance being really effective for depression. Music has been really effective for Alzheimer's.
Speaker D: Yes, yes.
Speaker C: Yeah. But to kind of segue from that. I am curious what you think a researcher can learn from.
Speaker D: From artists.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker D: So I think researchers outside of academia who I think are uh, doing amazing work, but what they might gain from academics is the structure through which we have to teach research. So when I teach research, there's an official governmental definition that's based off of abuses following the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Tuskegee Experiment that says research is, I'm going to say it wrong. It's like a systemic investigation that produces generalizable knowledge. Systemic investigation with processes that produces generalizable knowledge. And when I teach research, I always teach research in six parts. So your topic, so what's your topic, your research question, what do you want to answer? A how or why question? Your literature review. And I think it's actually really important for outside researchers, like who are the field in which you're engaging with research? So I have my students read often do antibiographies of, ah, 5, 10, 20 sources or more where they're looking at who are people that did similar work, different work, what did they find out? Who is that field? Fourth, your methods. What are your specific and clear methods? Are you interviewing X amount of people? Are you asking them all the same question, different questions, et cetera, et cetera. 5 is your findings from analysis, from your kind of your methods. And sixth is the stakes. The so what, why is this important? So those are the six things that uh, I always teach when I teach research are those six things. So topic, research question, literature review, methods, your findings and the stakes of this work. Why is it important? In learning music, there's so much like iterative repetition. So you'll repeat and repeat and repeat as a way to learn. But also in that repetition you learn new things. Right? Like you can understand a song differently after practicing it 10 times. And so I think that that kind of like iteration and repetition is one Way in for researchers to think about, uh, a process for them to think about. And I think we could apply that to other types of arts. So, like, what might we learn from a theater actor who's both conscious of the lines they need to remember, but also their body in space? Similarly, what might be learned from a dancer? Their movement, their body and space, but also their training. How certain types of training. What does it mean to be a ballet dancer who also trains in hip hop and modern. What does it mean to be a modern dancer who trains, who train only in ballet, et cetera, et cetera? Um, we might think about each discipline of art. What are the kind of skills that artists use, and how does that frame how they think?
Speaker C: I want to, um, highlight a couple of things that you said in there that I think are really important takeaways. And then I'll also highlight some things that were mentioned earlier on in the interview as well. Firstly, the literature review. I'm always surprised by how many researchers outside the academy just go out and just interview people and never read anything else about it, even before the interview, so as to, like, craft and refine and improve on the types of questions that they'll ask. And I'm not saying go out and read academic sources. God, no. Do not do that. It's just going to frustrate you. But I'm saying read a news article on the subject matter, read a blog post on the subject matter, just read other things, other ways that people have engaged with the topic. Before you begin crafting the questions and before you encounter someone, I promise you it'll really improve, um, the types of questions you're able to come up with. Um, it'll really improve your ability to kind of gather the data that you need. The other thing you said about, like, what can we learn from a theater professional about body and space? Let me tell you, I am not even an actor, but because I have been around them in the school of drama, I think a lot about how my body reads to another person. And I think this is really important, especially if you're trying to do inclusive work. But your body, again, as we talked about, reads as neutral. You know, if you are interviewing someone and you are not from a marginalized group, but that person is, think about how your body might, what it might mean to them. Like, what kind of meanings are put onto your body? Right? Whether or not you identify with those meanings or not. What are the meanings that are put onto your body? And how is your body in space, like, activating that? How are you showing up, dressed, how are you talking to them, how are you leaning into the conversation? Like, how are you sitting? All of these things, what is your tone, what can you do with your body and, and the ways in which you are taking up space in the process of the interview to make them feel more comfortable. Be body conscious, be body aware. It really again will change the dynamic of the interview itself. If you're thinking about how you're going to make someone feel comfortable and confident in asking the questions that you're posing, uh, to them. One of the things you talked about earlier was about positionality. The chart that we discussed was a great kind of example of that. But even if you don't want to go through all of the trouble of charting, just asking yourself who you are in relation to the person you're interviewing and the subject matter that you're interviewing about, I think that insight is really useful as self reflection before you step into a space that's unfamiliar with somebody else, that's unfamiliar. And then the final takeaway that I got from you, Jasmine, over this brilliant hour that we spent together is the embodying people. That exercise. I really do want to highlight that exercise. We talk a lot in UX research about empathy. We talk a lot about that, how the interview should be empathetic and that. And through that you can make better connections and gain better insights. This exercise of embodying the person you interview is literally an empathy building exercise. What does it feel like to walk in their shoes? Just do it. Just walk in their shoes, walk as them. If you pay attention to the details of how they walk, how they navigate, how they sit, how they navigate, and then you try to put that on your own body. Sit like they're sitting. I'm, um, not saying do this in front of them, saying do this after. Sit as they're sitting, walk as they're walking, you get a sense, like a real physical sense of how they might be moving and feeling in the world. I've done this exercise before actually, when I was at San Jose State and there was one student in particular who stuck out to me because they interviewed their grandmother and their grandmother had like a slight curve to her back. Her waist was always hurting, so she compensated in a certain way. And so the student, when they were walking as their grandmother, started to embody those M movements, those motions. And in the conversation that we had after, she was like, oh my God, I totally understand, you know, how my grandmother's body feels. You know, like it had, I guess, been a running joke that the grandmother's always like, oh, my back, oh, my, this. But in actually, like, walking like that person for, you know, five, 10 minutes, she got to, like, feel it in her body. And that is empathy. That, my friends, is empathy.
Speaker D: You are such a good, ah, synthesizer. Nikki, among your gazillion talents. And when you were talking about the literature review and kind of how often outside academia people aren't doing it, I think it goes back to this idea of inclusivity and, like, the politics and ethics behind inclusivity. To me, the literature review is one of the most ethical things you can do. It's saying, like, whose shoulders are you on? Who has come there before? Who are you in dialogue with? I often tell my students when we think about the literature review, imagine that amazing, um, dinner table of scholars you want to be at with, and maybe you completely agree with them or disagree with them, but people that have informed your learning. And so I think we should remember that there is behind all of those four things that you just mentioned, behind each of them. And especially literature review, there's such an ethics and politics of saying, my research, my. Not just the methods I'm doing, the questions I'm asking, but the findings are always going to be in dialogue with other people. If you flip it on its other head and be kind of a selfish way and think about it, like, say you did a study of people that have three cats and what they think about water, and then the next year someone did the exact same study and they didn't cite you, how would you feel? You would feel ignored, and you also would be like, hey, man, if you came to me, your study could be stronger. So I just want to encourage researchers out there to really do that literature review work, do that citational work where they look at, they engage with those who have done similar research as a way to make your work more inclusive.
Speaker C: Thank you, Jasmine. Thanks, Nikki.
Speaker D: It was an honor to be here.
Speaker C: Always a pleasure.
Speaker B: Um, what a fascinating conversation. We definitely need to pass the mic more often around here at Tripp. It was truly a treat to hear from both of our guest speakers. Kristen, my mind is spinning a little bit on takeaways. What stuck out for you from that conversation? What's top of mind?
Speaker A: Yeah, I'm feeling the same. Katrina. I love the rich contextual, like elevation of the podcast, if you will. There was a, uh, point of inclusivity just of their own personal conversation that I felt was so rich for me. Granularity and culture and embodiment. But I think one key insight I'm going To take away from this, this entire amazing conversation was when Nikki was talking with Jasmine and kind of asked her a little bit about the directness around how inclusivity is taught. And she actually, because she teaches, uh, about racial equity in her coursework, the dimension of exclusivity, she said, actually was mentioning around city planning. And I hadn't even thought that that might be a historical marker for inclusivity. And I think this will always land quite hard, which I love being able to piggyback on previous episodes. But not just who's at the table, who's missing from the table, but why are those people not at the table. I really felt a level of depth when I, I challenged myself on the why from that.
Speaker B: Yeah, once again. Once again we have another definition of inclusivity. Now we've got city planning added to the list.
Speaker D: Ah, yeah.
Speaker B: And I really loved Nikki suggested positionality check exercise as a way of really focusing on who you are in relation to the subject matter that you're researching and the people that you're having conversations with. I don't think we emphasize that enough in industry. I think it's really important to think about who you are and your relation to the subject matter more. You know, we're in logistic land at that point and we're doing less self examination and less thoughtful prep. So I'm taking that away. I'm taking the chart exercise prep away and can't wait to hear from our listeners about gems that you pulled out of the episodes and things from this academic world that you can pull into your own work.
Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think that's a great summation, Katrina, and I think it's a great, fantastic way to end the season. It's been such a pleasure.
Speaker B: And if you are a previous trip guest and you're listening and you have someone in your world you, you would like to grab the mic and interview, let us know. We are open for scheduling season seven, so let us know if you want to come back and talk to Tripp again with a colleague.
Speaker D: The Research Inclusion project is hosted by
Speaker C: Kristen Spraggins and Katrina Noel and is
Speaker D: produced in partnership with Hasty Storytelling. Hasty Storytelling is a creative agency that specializes in quantity, qualitative market research solutions, video and audio production, graphic design, animation and photography.
Speaker C: Trip is available wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker A: M.
S07E01: Accessible Research is Good Research (with Steve Levine and Kari Bassett-Levine)64 / 100S06E05: Build Tools with Inclusivity in Mind with Shamsu Bhaidani of Bello