CHAPTER 1: Starting with location

When I moved to Canada, people used to ask me what type of work I wanted to do; I would answer that I wanted to be a researcher. "Oh! You want to be a professor, you want to stay in the university," they would reply, "that's not for me, I am not a lab person." It took me a while to understand that we were referring to different practices. I envisioned being a researcher as something broader, with potential affiliations with different social institutions. In my experience in Argentina, being affiliated with a university was not exclusive. Due to low salaries, having to make a living in Argentina requires that university professors take additional jobs so professors also work at other institutions. Often, these jobs usually involve a heavy research or educational component, drawing them to a close link to non-university organisations and, with this, reducing the distance between the university and other social institutions. In my mind and experience, social researchers - including university-based researchers - are not "lab people," they work with people in schools, community centres, trade unions, grass roots associations and private companies.

My research experience in Argentina had shown me that this was possible. Between 1986 and 1989 I was involved in socio-economic research in a neighbourhood in the City of Buenos Aires with the University of Buenos Aires. The team that carried out the research collected data by interviewing and observing different sites and people. As part of the research project, the team organized a variety of social and educational activities in the neighbourhood, which in turn yielded new data. We saw ourselves as social animators and educators. In other words, we identified ourselves with a dual role of community researchers and educators that were affiliated with the university.

Since I started to work in research in Canada, I have been part of several collaborative projects between university researchers and researchers who are not based in a university. Between 1992 and 1994, I was part of a National Literacy Demonstration Project. This project was initiated by the director of an adult literacy program who contacted university researchers to work together on the evaluation of two adult literacy centres in the Lower Mainland. The team involved in doing this research included two instructors, one from each of the two programs participating in the evaluation. Later, I was part of a team that looked at childcare work in the Lower Mainland. Again, this project included a partnership with a community organisation.