The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Participatory Inquiry in Transnational Research Contexts (Endarkened Feminism as/in Critical Participatory Inquiry: Lessons from First-Generation Women of the African Diaspora)

Black researchers are often situated as brokers in participatory research projects in which their knowledge and expertise is either limited to anti-racist scholarship or on the margins of participatory research. Critical participatory inquiry (CPI) offers some guiding epistemological commitments that steer researchers toward anti-oppressive and anti-extractive practices. CPI, coupled with transnationalism, or the movement of groups across national borders, interrupts the limitations around participatory research that prioritized and reproduced Western priorities in research to include anti-racist and decolonial epistemological commitments. The first-generation women of the African diaspora (FGWAD) collective extends a transnational CPI approach by centering Black feminism in an endarkened feminist epistemological perspective to participatory research, otherwise known as endarkened feminist critical participatory inquiry (EFCPI). The collective engaged in an endarkened feminist version of transnational CPI, by exploring the experiences of first-generation college students and women of the African diaspora. The authors offer three recommendations for fostering a more inclusive perspective to transnational CPI by paying attention to expertise, shared ownership, and the redistribution of power.

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