The ‘amazing space’ of feminist participatory data analysis

This article describes a visual and participatory study exploring postsecondary students’ conceptualisations of feminism. We conducted the study in two phases: the first involved individual object elicitation interviews and the second involved group participatory data analysis sessions. Here, we focus on the participatory data analysis phase and the ‘amazing space’ some participants felt it engendered. We discuss two features that we see as related to this interpretation of the research process. The participatory data analysis sessions were, on the one hand, encounters suffused with intimacy and vulnerability, and on the other hand, dialogues that exposed participants to interpretive disagreements and tensions. We also reflect on how the study’s culminating research exhibit worked to extend the ‘amazing space’ cultivated during data collection.