Looking back, looking forward: Reflections on the origins of the international participatory research network and the participatory research group in Toronto, Canada

Abstract

In this article, Dr. Budd Hall looks back on the early history of the International Participatory Research Network, founded in 1976 in association with the International Council for Adult Education. He traces his own path into the work through years spent in Tanzania, where Julius Nyerere's ideas on self-reliance, Marja Liisa Swantz's participant research, and a 1971 visit from Paulo Freire shaped his understanding of research as an act of solidarity rather than a neutral exercise. He describes the 1975 special issue of Convergence that first drew together scattered efforts around the world, the 1977 Cartagena conference with Orlando Fals Borda and other Latin American scholar-activists, and the network's founding commitment to autonomous, horizontally organised nodes across Toronto, New Delhi, Dar es Salaam, the Netherlands, and Caracas. He then considers what role universities should play in a field built on breaking the academy's monopoly over knowledge production and reflects on the structural pressures that work against genuine collaboration between academics and communities. The article closes by asking whether participatory research might extend further, toward co-creating knowledge with the rest of nature.