https://at-ceu.studyguide.timeedit.net/modules/UWC5034?type=CORECommunity-based, participatory action research (PAR) is action-oriented research that emerges from the concerns and experiences of communities themselves. While much academic work is about communities, very little involves the community in the research process, and rarely are the results of the research used directly by the communities.In PAR, the identification of problems, the development of research questions, the analysis, dissemination, and the translation of co-created knowledge into action are carried out together with communities. It is a systematic research approach that accompanies the bottom-up process of social change. The goal of PAR is to produce a practical knowledge that is used to solve a problem the communities face, and bring about societal change that is particularly beneficial to marginalised and disadvantaged groups. Communities include wide range of civil society actors from Non-Governmental Organisation (NGOs), public authorities, schools, cultural institutions, and Non-Profit Organisations (NPOs) that are concerned with and engaged in social issues such as inequality or environmental sustainability. It could also be a group of people such as teachers, parents or youth groups who are facing common challenges and striving for societal transformation. This course develops students' understanding and skills, both in theory and practice to plan a small-scale, community-based research project with a PAR component. The focus will be on approaches and tools used in Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) research, which is a type of PAR that specifically takes asymmetries of power relations into consideration in its research design and is especially suitable when working with minority communities such as migrants. This graduate-level course is intended for students interested in conducting a research project applying the principles of community-based research as part of their course requirement, capstone, or thesis work. It requires students to learn how to develop, manage and implement community-based action-oriented project in a participatory way, and to apply various PAR tools in collecting and analysing data together with communities. It should complement other compulsory courses in research methodology and broaden students' repertoire of approaches to addressing and understanding social issues in different ways. Students will work in groups on topics presented by our community partners and NGOs. Students will reflect on the challenges, pitfalls, and wider potential applications of PAR in different disciplines. This will be done through classroom simulation exercise as well as fieldwork working with a community organisation aimed at co-developing an actual community action plan. Over the course of the term, and culminating in a final project, groups will develop a small-scale PAR based on one of the three challenges described in the syllabus.