Episode 42: Episode 42. Jori Hall Interviews Giovanni Dazzo

Hello everyone and welcome to qualitative conversations, a podcast series hosted by the qualitative research special interest group of the American Educational Research Association. I am Jori Hall, a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I also serve as the chair of the Egon Guba Award for Outstanding Contributions to Qualitative Research for the Qualitative Research Special Interest Group. I am beyond excited today to be joined by Dr. Giovanni Dazzo who was the recipient of the 2023 QRSIG Outstanding Dissertation Award for his dissertation titled Restorative validity: Exploring how critical participatory inquiry can promote peace, justice and healing. Giovanni is an interdisciplinary researcher, and evaluator and assistant professor at the University of Georgia. His work is focused on critical theoretical approaches to research and evaluation methodologies. In particular, he is interested in exploring the intersections of validity and ethics within critical participatory forms of inquiry, and the ways in which research and social policies can better be informed by communities. His work has been featured in a multitude of peer reviewed journals, such as the International Journal of Qualitative Methods, Educational Action Research, Cultural Studies ⇔ Critical Methodologies, and Conflict Resolution Quarterly. Giovanni is also the co-author of the recently published textbook by Sage called Critical Participatory Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Guide. Giovanni, it is a pleasure to have you with us today.

Thank you, Jori. It's a pleasure to be here. You make me sound so good.

Well, it's easy based on all the fabulous things you've done. Are you ready to get started? Giovanni?

Yeah, let's get started.

Great. So I was thinking that our audience would greatly appreciate learning more about your dissertation work. Can you just talk a little bit about your dissertation, maybe about its scope?

Yeah, so the dissertation really focused on a long term critical participatory action research project in Guatemala. And I partnered with an organization that conducts forensic anthropology. It's the forensic anthropology foundation of Guatemala. So essentially, in their day to day, they investigate possible made mass grave sites that resulted from the country's 36 year armed conflict, which happened from 1960 to 1996. And then they work closely with communities who witnessed and experienced those atrocities to document the stories of those who are forcibly disappeared by the government. And they then extract DNA from living family members exhumed human remains from mass grave sites, and then attempt to match the DNA so they can identify those who were disappeared. So I worked alongside the forensic anthropology foundation of Guatemala or FAFG. And Kaqchikel speaking my community to see how we could all together as a research collective, explore how the research process could be made more restorative.

And really, if you start to think about it, the work of FAFG is literally extractive to communities. They're pulling DNA from swamps, they're digging into the earth, and they're hoping to produce a match. Unfortunately, the success rate at the moment is just 14%. Because these human remains have been in the ground anywhere between 28 to 64 years.

And those who witnessed the atrocities happen.

They continue to pass away as time goes by. So we really sought to form the basis for this conceptual methodological framework called restorative validity. Truthfully, I stopped calling it a framework, because journal reviewers kept asking, is it a theoretical framework, a conceptual framework, a methodological framework so I started calling it what it is, and it's an agenda. It's a call to action. And we really wanted to explore and understand the factors that aid or impede