Description
Recent calls to decolonise International Relations (IR) have underscored the need to conduct research not on, but with and for historically marginalised voices. Participatory and collaborative methodologies offer a practical way forward by centring co-created, context-specific research grounded in reciprocity, relationality and experiential knowledge. Despite a recent surge of interest in Participatory Action Research (PAR) across the Social Sciences, researchers have largely overlooked the importance of PAR in doctoral research, as well as the difficulties of implementing it at this level. Based on autoethnographic reflection and existing literature, this paper highlights the situated challenges of doing participatory doctoral research in IR, including the institutional, structural, financial, and temporal constraints. It argues that the structure of conventional PhD programmes reinforces extractive, colonial dynamics by prioritising individualism and rapid data collection over meaningful, collaborative engagement throughout the research process. The paper offers tangible examples for PhD researchers on how to embed the values of PAR in their work, as well as more radical suggestions for rethinking the structure of doctoral research programmes to encourage, normalise, and support a participatory and thus decolonial praxis. If we are to move beyond colonial and hegemonic methodologies in IR we must embed collaborative, dialogical, and horizontal research practices that disrupt traditional power imbalances early on in the research process. This requires a radical reimagination of doctoral research from the ground up.
