Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DEPWAT (Decolonial Pedagogy in Women’s Audiovisual Training in the Global South. Case studies in Mexico, Ecuador, and Guatemala)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2024-01-22 al 2026-01-21
Women’s audiovisual training in the Global South is a critical site for examining how colonial and gender hierarchies shape access to learning, the circulation of knowledge, and the visibility of cultural production. DEPWAT focused on audiovisual initiatives in Mexico, Guatemala, and Ecuador to explore how these hierarchies take form in practices of learning and transmission. In doing so, the project addressed a gap in existing research, which has paid greater attention to representation, authorship, and labour insertion than to training as a constitutive dimension of inequality.
The project also examined how pedagogical models, institutional arrangements, and regimes of knowledge shape who can enter audiovisual practice, under what conditions, and with what possibilities of continuity and recognition. To address these questions, DEPWAT developed a collaborative qualitative methodology through workshops and epistemic assemblies across the three country contexts. These formats created spaces for situated exchange, plurality, and negotiation, allowing the project to engage women’s audiovisual experiences without reducing heterogeneous trajectories to a single interpretive frame.
Within this context, DEPWAT pursued four main objectives: to identify the factors that hinder women’s access to audiovisual training; to engage training experiences through collaborative qualitative research; to advance reflection on decolonial pedagogical approaches in audiovisual contexts; and to sustain a platform for dissemination, exchange, and intercultural learning. In this way, the project examined women’s audiovisual training as a site where inequality is organised, while also exploring how decolonial pedagogy may open other forms of learning and inquiry. The project is grounded in Social Sciences and Humanities, particularly philosophy, feminist and decolonial theory, media studies, and education, which shape its conceptual framework, methodological design, and pedagogical reflection.
The project also examined how pedagogical models, institutional arrangements, and regimes of knowledge shape who can enter audiovisual practice, under what conditions, and with what possibilities of continuity and recognition. To address these questions, DEPWAT developed a collaborative qualitative methodology through workshops and epistemic assemblies across the three country contexts. These formats created spaces for situated exchange, plurality, and negotiation, allowing the project to engage women’s audiovisual experiences without reducing heterogeneous trajectories to a single interpretive frame.
Within this context, DEPWAT pursued four main objectives: to identify the factors that hinder women’s access to audiovisual training; to engage training experiences through collaborative qualitative research; to advance reflection on decolonial pedagogical approaches in audiovisual contexts; and to sustain a platform for dissemination, exchange, and intercultural learning. In this way, the project examined women’s audiovisual training as a site where inequality is organised, while also exploring how decolonial pedagogy may open other forms of learning and inquiry. The project is grounded in Social Sciences and Humanities, particularly philosophy, feminist and decolonial theory, media studies, and education, which shape its conceptual framework, methodological design, and pedagogical reflection.
The project carried out a collaborative qualitative research process focused on women’s participation and visibility in audiovisual training in Mexico, Guatemala, and Ecuador. It combined conceptual work in feminist and decolonial theory with empirical activities designed to engage training experiences, learning processes, and conditions of access, continuity, and recognition in situated ways. The main empirical work was organised through three workshops and two epistemic assemblies, which created spaces to engage with women’s audiovisual experiences across different territorial, institutional, and community-based settings. Together, these activities involved 208 participants and generated material on structural barriers such as territorial centralisation, material precarity, labour conditions, and the limited recognition of situated and non-institutional forms of learning.
A central achievement of the project was the development of epistemic assemblies as an approach to collaborative qualitative inquiry. These formats created shared spaces for exchange, interpretation, and collective reflection, allowing heterogeneous trajectories and forms of knowledge to emerge without being reduced to a single interpretive frame. In this way, the methodological development of the project also materialised its decolonial pedagogical reflection by connecting knowledge production to practices of learning, care, and answerability.
The project also advanced reflection on decolonial pedagogical approaches in audiovisual contexts. It identified the factors shaping women’s access to training, examined the relation between pedagogy and colonial difference, and developed an account of how colonial and gender hierarchies are reproduced through training structures, institutional arrangements, and regimes of knowledge. This work also led to pedagogical resources and a project website documenting activities and supporting the circulation of the project’s methodological and pedagogical contributions. In this way, the project fulfilled its scientific objectives by developing an account of the conditions shaping women’s audiovisual training and by advancing a methodological and pedagogical reflection grounded in collaborative qualitative research.
A central achievement of the project was the development of epistemic assemblies as an approach to collaborative qualitative inquiry. These formats created shared spaces for exchange, interpretation, and collective reflection, allowing heterogeneous trajectories and forms of knowledge to emerge without being reduced to a single interpretive frame. In this way, the methodological development of the project also materialised its decolonial pedagogical reflection by connecting knowledge production to practices of learning, care, and answerability.
The project also advanced reflection on decolonial pedagogical approaches in audiovisual contexts. It identified the factors shaping women’s access to training, examined the relation between pedagogy and colonial difference, and developed an account of how colonial and gender hierarchies are reproduced through training structures, institutional arrangements, and regimes of knowledge. This work also led to pedagogical resources and a project website documenting activities and supporting the circulation of the project’s methodological and pedagogical contributions. In this way, the project fulfilled its scientific objectives by developing an account of the conditions shaping women’s audiovisual training and by advancing a methodological and pedagogical reflection grounded in collaborative qualitative research.
The project generated results that extend existing research on women’s participation in the audiovisual sector by examining training as a site where colonial and gender hierarchies are organised through pedagogical models, institutional arrangements, and regimes of knowledge. In this way, it moved beyond approaches focused mainly on representation, authorship, or labour insertion and produced situated qualitative knowledge on training experiences, learning processes, and conditions of recognition in Mexico, Guatemala, and Ecuador. It also contributes to debates on the coloniality of gender and decolonial feminist research by questioning the subject/object paradigm that underpins extractivist forms of inquiry and by foregrounding relational, context-specific, and answerable forms of knowledge production.
Beyond its methodological contribution, the project advances reflection on decolonial pedagogical approaches in audiovisual contexts by showing how audiovisual initiatives also operate as spaces of learning, transmission, and shared inquiry. It also contributes to ongoing discussions on community-based audiovisual practices by approaching them as relational forms of knowledge-making. The project’s results include qualitative material generated through workshops and epistemic assemblies, methodological and conceptual outputs, open-access pedagogical resources, and a project website supporting the circulation of results. Their further uptake is expected to depend mainly on follow-up research, continued use in educational and organisational contexts, and the open-access circulation and reuse of the project’s conceptual and methodological contributions.
Beyond its methodological contribution, the project advances reflection on decolonial pedagogical approaches in audiovisual contexts by showing how audiovisual initiatives also operate as spaces of learning, transmission, and shared inquiry. It also contributes to ongoing discussions on community-based audiovisual practices by approaching them as relational forms of knowledge-making. The project’s results include qualitative material generated through workshops and epistemic assemblies, methodological and conceptual outputs, open-access pedagogical resources, and a project website supporting the circulation of results. Their further uptake is expected to depend mainly on follow-up research, continued use in educational and organisational contexts, and the open-access circulation and reuse of the project’s conceptual and methodological contributions.