Roundtable: Revisiting COHDS Ethics

In the past year, we have received a series of inquiries related to ethics and consent that we think could offer a good opportunity to revisit COHDS’ ethics principles and practices to remain in phase with the needs of our affiliates, of our community partners and of the society at large.

In this context, we would like to mobilize COHDS community to reflect on these evolving ethical principles and practices. As a starting point we have identified a few questions that might help stimulate this conversation:

The signed consent form requirement aims to protect participants, but sometimes act as barriers for marginalized individuals who might not have the academic culture or the required level of literacy to fully understand them.

Does insisting on a written, and sometimes complex, consent form undermine our efforts to achieve “shared authority”? What measures can we adopt to acknowledge that academic culture, literacy (and language spoken) varies throughout all communities? How can we move forward on this issue while still maintaining our strong ethical foundation? What protections can we put in place so that participants’ wishes can be respected and maintained over time?

What does “shared authority” mean in the context of emancipatory social movements and anti-colonial struggles? What does it mean to decolonize our ethics protocols and our archives? What do indigenous communities and other cultural groups expect from the archive in terms of ownership, control, access, and sharing of their stories?

To address these questions, we would like to organize a round table and/or a workshop during the year 2022/2023 with the aim of updating and amending COHDS’ statement and principles on ethics. We welcome any suggestions from our affiliates, that might contribute to a collective discussion around these issues.

With Anna Sheftel, Aude Maltais-Landry, Catherine Richardson, Indira Chowdhury, Monica Toca and Steven High

Moderated by Eliot Perrin

This roundtable is in both English and French

REGISTRATION

Please note that all of our events are free and open to all, but you need to register! To register, contact us at: cohds.chorn@concordia.ca

In person (20 people max)

LB 1019 (Sunroom), Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS)

To attend online, please visit the event page on our website.

MORE INFORMATION

For more information about a specific event, please visit our website and Facebook pages closer to the date.

We will update these pages as soon as we have the details ourselves!

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.