Training · University of Oxford research team and project interpreters / cultural mediators
Participatory Research Training with Sanctuary Seekers
““I would like greater practical clarity about how to operationalise participation.” - project team member”
The challenge
A migration-health team wanted participation to shape the project, not sit at the edge of it
The project centred people in Greece with experience of immigration detention and restricted healthcare access. Team members brought very different roles and levels of research experience, including academics, interpreters and cultural mediators. They wanted to share power meaningfully while navigating precarity, language, ethics, institutional constraints and uncertainty about how much different contributors could actually decide.
What we did
Training worked through roles, interpreters, power, ethics, creative methods and decision-making
Open Routes Research used a pre-workshop survey and co-design call to build training around the team’s real concerns. The session covered participation, consultation, co-design and co-production; recruitment; ongoing consent; power over agendas and resources; working through interpreters; facilitation; creative methods; co-analysis and co-writing. Exercises asked the team to map where different people could influence the research process and where institutional limits needed to be made explicit.
What changed
The team developed shared language and practical ways for sanctuary seekers and cultural mediators to influence the research
The training helped move participation from a general aspiration into concrete questions about roles, decision-making and accountability. It also recognised that interpreters bring cultural knowledge and relational expertise that can exceed a narrow translation role. The team left with a clearer framework for deciding what could be shared, how contributors could move between roles and where further support would be needed as the project developed.
Outputs
Bespoke participatory-research training; pre-workshop needs assessment; practical planning exercises and resource pack