Dalla Lana School of Public Health

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Presented by the Centre for Critical Qualitative Health Research …

This session introduces kwentuhan, a Filipino epistemology and storytelling through conversational exchanges and community building, as a qualitative methodology and decolonial praxis for research justice in health and social inquiry. We frame kwentuhan as a community-held, relational approach that foregrounds reciprocity, shared stories, and embodied/experiential and intergenerational knowledges. Responding to CQ’s focus on justice-oriented praxis, we conceptualize research justice as collective governance over questions, meanings, and uses of knowledge, as well as accountability to communities experiencing racialization, im/migration, care work precarity, labor exploitation, and gendered violence. Drawing from our respective works on communities of care, intergenerational im/migration and aging, we present case examples on how kwentuhan reorients research toward community priorities; enacts rigor through relationality, resonance, and collective analysis; and mobilizes findings via formats that sustain social justice (such as the creation of zines, community art exhibits, audio narratives, teach-ins, and policy dialogues). We discuss tensions and opportunities in navigating institutional timelines and REB protocols, practicing layered translation, negotiating power within/between Filipino communities, and resisting extractive “inclusion” through shared responsibilities in design, data generation, analysis, and mobilization.