INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

(Re)thinking vulnerability through artistic methodologies

ICS-ULisboa, 2 and 3 November

Within the fields of Social Sciences, arts-based research methods have increasingly emerged as particularly generative approaches when working with socially vulnerable populations or when addressing sensitive topics in which embodied experience, affect, sensory perception, and memory are central to the research process. Practices such as filmmaking, drama, music, poetry, dance, photography, and drawing, once primarily associated with artistic production, are now widely adopted as research tools, both for participatory and collaborative forms of data generation and interpretation, as well as for the dissemination of research findings.

In this context, arts-based methodologies are understood and mobilised as a form of epistemic care, which recognises knowledge as relational, situated, and co-produced rather than detached or extractive. Arts-based methods can help address the power imbalances that often exist between researchers and participants by encouraging more horizontal and dialogical relationships, grounded in reflexivity, attentiveness, and mutual responsiveness. They also enable the acknowledgement and valuing of experiences of fragility, vulnerability, and marginalisation, reinforcing a collective responsibility to create spaces of recognition, voice, and dignity, especially in contexts where affective, sensory, and embodied registers carry forms of knowledge that resist purely discursive articulation.

The conference is organised by the LIFE Research Group of the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon (ICS-ULisboa).

Organisers: Ana Patrícia Hilário (ICS-ULisboa), Carolina Silva (ICS-ULisboa), Chiara Pussetti (ICS-ULisboa) e Fábio Rafael Augusto (ICS-ULisboa)