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Cultural diversity through

transformative action research:

translating ideas into real world impact

Prof. Fethi Mansouri, Dr David Tittensor and Riccardo Armillei,

Alfred Deakin Research Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation

ccording to the World Bank, in 2013 more than

215 million people were living outside their coun-

tries of birth, and the United Nations Population

Fund outlined that if all international migrants lived in the

same place they would constitute the world’s fifth most

populous country. In other words, the world’s migrant

population is greater than at any other time in history and

is expected to grow further. As a result of this ever-increas-

ing human mobility, cultural diversity is a

fait accompli.

For this reason the mission of the Alfred Deakin Research

Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADRI-CG),

since its inception in 2001, has been to work towards

fostering intercultural understanding, human rights and

social inclusion through transformative action research

and within multidisciplinary approaches. Further, the

Institute is mindful that academic work alone is not

enough to effect lasting change in both policy and prac-

tice, and as such continually seeks strategic partnerships

and effective dissemination strategies to influence public

policy, and reach communities both locally and globally.

Transformative action is fundamentally about research that

involves ideas, discoveries and tools that seek to radically shift

our understanding of practices and leads to a paradigmatic

shift in the field in question. Further, and in the context of

social sciences research focused on cultural rights and inter-

cultural relations, transformative action research exhibits

three key characteristics.

The first key feature of transformative research around cultural

diversity and social justice is a

transdisciplinary

orientation; that

is to include scholars from across the humanities, the social

sciences and at times health, and environmental studies to

examine complex phenomena associatedwith rights and equality.

Within such an approach, ADRI-CG conducts cutting-edge inter-

disciplinary projects that bring together scholars from diverse

fields to develop innovative conceptual frameworks capable of

accounting for complex and often delicate social, cultural and

intercultural phenomena. A good illustrative example of this

multidimensional approach is a current project that explores

the impact of the mapping of the indigenous genome on iden-

tity formation, which brings together expertise from medicine,

public health, and anthropology.

The second key component of transformative action research

is that it needs to be

trans-sectoral,

wherein one collaborates

with multiple societal actors such as civil society organizations

(CSOs), philanthropic foundations, industry groups, decision

makers and practitioners. This kind of multilayered partnership

is critical not only for generating external resources and networks

often vital for the successful completion of the project, but

more importantly it ensures an optimal level of research uptake

and scalability. In other words, for transformative research on

cultural rights to achieve positive change it needs to engage the

key stakeholders from the early stages of the research design and

not at a post-completion dissemination stage. This is especially

relevant for research on intercultural relations, racism, social

justice and minority rights where a genuine ownership of the

research agenda is all the more important.

The third element of transformative action research is its

increasingly

transnational

orientation. This is linked to the

nature of globalization and the emergence of shared problems

that transcend the nation state borders, most notably the rise

of global terrorism and its consequent notions of human inse-

curity. Thus, research in this space must not only engage with

communities around the world, but must also incorporate their

different epistemic frameworks to reach a common understand-

ing and possibly a shared solution. This is also important in

research projects pertaining to cultural claims and human

rights, as methodological rigidity can amount to a form of

exclusion from the knowledge construction process itself.

Strategic partnerships

Recognizing the need to be both transdisciplinary and globally

oriented, ADRI-CG actively works with local councils, govern-

ment agencies, peak bodies and philanthropic organizations to

tackle issues around cultural diversity and social inclusion. For

example, during the 2009-2014 period, in partnership with a

local consortium of CSOs and with funding from the Australian

Research Council and local agencies, institute researchers

undertook an extensive research project that mapped the

networking activities of migrant youth in Australia at the

level of accessing formal (for example, government agencies,

non-government support services) and informal (for example,

family) networks. A key driver behind this collaborative

project is to examine the extent to which certain networking

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