Enacting Epistemic Freedom

Research at the Margins Tide
Written By Tracie Rogers

In this episode, I am joined by Joyanne De Four-Babb, scholar, research leader, and co-editor of Visual Methodologies and Methods for Caribbean Research. The conversation explores how visual methodologies function as epistemological and ethical interventions within Caribbean and Global South research contexts.

Drawing on examples from the book, Joyanne reflects on recognising drawings, photographs, and video as legitimate forms of data, on supervising students working with visual methods, and on the risks of reducing research participants to singular categories of marginalisation. The discussion also engages broader structural questions about who conducts research in Caribbean spaces, who is rewarded for that work, and how colonial academic institutions have constrained the development of local research cultures.

Throughout the episode, visual research is framed as a practice that can hold complexity, resist extractive knowledge production, and support the enactment of epistemic freedom within and beyond the academy.

What This Episode Offers

  • Visual methodologies as epistemological practice, not supplementary tools

  • Recognising drawings, photographs, and video as legitimate forms of qualitative data

  • Supervising and supporting students working with visual and arts-based research methods

  • Resisting single-story framings of marginalisation and attending to the fullness of personhood

  • Research ownership in Caribbean contexts: who conducts research and who benefits from it

  • The impact of colonial academic institutions on Caribbean research cultures

  • Building local research capacity as an ethical and institutional responsibility

  • Enacting epistemic freedom through method, framework, and research practice

📚 Further Reading / Resources

Bailey, C., McCree, R., Lazarus, L., & Dietrich Jones, N. (Eds.). (2023). The Routledge companion to applied qualitative research in the Caribbean. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003263043

Nakhid, C., Nakhid-Chatoor, M., Fernández Santana, A., & Wilson-Scott, S. (Eds.). (2022). Affirming methodologies: Research and education in the Caribbean. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003196969

Smith, L. T. (2021). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples (3rd ed.). Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350225282

Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2018). Epistemic freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and decolonization. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429492204

De Four-Babb, J., & Fraser-Burgess, S. (Eds.). (2026). Visual methodologies and methods for Caribbean research: Enacting epistemic freedom. Bloomsbury Academic.

Note: Publication date is January 8, 2026 (forthcoming). DOI not yet assigned.

Stewart, S. (Ed.). (2019). Decolonizing qualitative approaches for and by the Caribbean (Innovations in Qualitative Research). Information Age Publishing.

Tracie Rogers
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Diasporic Storying – Autoethnography as Method