The Role of the Humanities in Social Justice Research Methods

Tammy Nyden speaks on “Careers Connecting Sciences and the Social Good”

Grinnell Prize Week Panel, Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa.

October 3, 2018

Description:

Tammy Nyden is an associate professor of philosophy whose research and teaching has focused in the history and philosophy of science. She is also the co-founder and president of Mothers on the Frontline, a non-profit organization that uses storytelling as a method of children’s mental health advocacy and caregiver healing. She will discuss the Mothers on the Frontline’s interview method and methodology for story collecting and how it can inform and complement more traditional qualitative and quantitative research. This methodology is inductive in nature and is grounded on the premise that important and often overlooked topics and potential research questions will arise when not held down by preconceived narratives that are necessarily part of traditional research methods. Tammy is currently collaborating with Stephanie Jones (education), Kesho Scott (sociology) (with whom she has received the Innovation Grant this year) and Dionne Bensonsmith & Angela Riccio of Mothers on the Frontline to create an archive of personal stories on the School-to-Prison Pipeline using this method. These stories, along with stories gathered by Mothers on the Frontline on mothering children with mental illness will be available by the end of this year a new archive in Digital Grinnell called “Digital Stories for Social Justice.” (This archive will also host student work from the course they are creating under the Innovation Grant.)