How Identity, Power, and Lived Experience
Shape Research
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of the session is to explore how identity, power, and lived experience shape research not only in the design of studies, but also in determining whose knowledge is valued, whose voices are amplified and how realities are often excluded.
• Today, we are here on the ancestral land of the Piscataway people, the first inhabitants of what we now call Baltimore, a tribe that is part of a vibrant band of nations that have called the shores of the Chesapeake Bay home for millennia, including Cedarville Band of Piscataway Conoy, Piscataway Indian Nation, Piscataway Conoy Tribe, the Lumbee, and the Algonquian (Al-Gon-Qwe-An) Peoples. To the elders and citizens of these nations, past and present, we offer our humble respect.
LAND
Acknowledgement
• We also want to acknowledge the countless African ancestors who were trafficked across the Atlantic Ocean from the Yoruba (Yo-row-bah), Igbo (ee-bo), Fon (fawn), Fulani (foo-lah-ni), Mbundu (m-bun-doo), Mende (men-day), Wolof (wo-lof) and countless other nations to labor in the colony and eventual state of Maryland from late 1500’s until and after emancipation in 1865. Bringing with them generations of expertise in science from astronomy to medicine and more that became the economic backbone for this state and nation. Labor for which they, and their descendants, have yet to be properly compensated.
LAND
Acknowledgement Cont.
• We also give respect to the past and current residents of Baltimore's Black Butterfly. Who, in the face of destructive policies and extractive practices like Redlining and Tax Sale, have remained committed to preserving the rich legacy of the movementsEmancipation, Civil Rights, Black Power and Liberation. It is on this very foundation that we stand and build toward a dope future.
• And, while this acknowledgement is not enough, this is a step toward repair. One that centers decolonization, Indigenous, Black, and Brown visibility and reminds us that we are on both historically charged and sacred land.
We call and honor Baltimore ancestors of color who fought for freedom:
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper — abolitionist, poet, suffragist.
Frederick Douglass — abolitionist, statesman.
Harriet Tubman — liberator, strategist.
Thurgood Marshall — jurist, architect of Brown v. Board.
Carl J. Murphy — publisher, civil rights press.
Lillie May Carroll Jackson — “Mother of the Freedom Movement.”
Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. — “Mr. Civil Rights.”
Juanita Jackson Mitchell — civil rights attorney.
Enolia McMillan — educator, NAACP president.
Verda Freeman Welcome — trailblazing legislator.
Victorine Q. Adams — voting-rights organizer.
Walter P. Carter — direct-action leader.
Henrietta Lacks — catalyst for medical ethics and justice.
Elijah Cummings — champion of accountability and voting rights.
• Leader: We seek right relationship.
Call & Response (Community)
• People: May our actions honor the people and the land.
• Leader: We commit to reciprocity.
• People: May resources flow to those who stewarded before us.
Maurissa Stone
Maurissa Stone is a social entrepreneur and community strategist dedicated to cultural sustainability, healing, and economic vibrancy. She serves as Director of Innovation at The Living Well Center for Social & Economic Vibrancy, founder of Black Canni, and CEO of Iona Concepts, Inc. Maurissa leads liberatory, community-led research (CPAR), data equity training, and trauma-informed convenings that blend storytelling, wellness, and entrepreneurship. Her work activates third-space hubs such as Fight Blight Bmore’s Hack Hub, vendor markets, and policy partnerships to advance repair, opportunity, and belonging for Black communities.
Dionne Joyner-Weems
Dionne Joyner-Weems is a Audacity Group LLC Baltimore-born storyteller, strategist, and Chief Energy Officer of—a brand and community engagement agency that turns insight into bold impact. Through her social enterprise, the #MyBmore Project, she creates spaces where lived experience guides the narrative and stories guide strategy. Dionne leads community-based initiatives that uplift resident voices, strengthen collaboration, and translate neighborhood truths into data that drives change.
Boundaries
Belonging
& Responsibility
BRAVE Space Strategies
Boundaries & Belonging
Respect & Responsibility
Shared agreements are posted each session (confidentiality, time, consent to pass). Use opt-in participation (you can pass, pause, or step out).
“Assume best intent, attend to real impact.” Name impact without shame. No fixing/saving advice unless requested; ask: “Do you want ideas or listening?”
OPERATIONALIZE BRAVE
Accountability
Vulnerability
If harm occurs: acknowledge → apologize → ask what repair looks like → do it.
Use “I statements” and impact statements (“When X happened, I felt Y…”).
Empathy & Equity
Model imperfection from the top (leaders share learning edges).
Invite story, not spectacle: time-boxed shares with content warnings as needed.
Use inclusive language; avoid generalizations about groups. Make space/Take space: those who speak often go last; use stack to balance voices.
Grounding before group work (or “group think”) helps everyone arrive fully, not frayed. A brief centering—breath, posture check, silence, or a simple body scan—downshifts the nervous system, widens attention, and reduces reactivity. This makes the space safer and more equitable by:
Settling stress: lowers fight/flight so people think clearly, not defensively.
Equalizing voice: slows fast talkers, supports quieter members to speak.
Clarifying intent: aligns the group on purpose and shared agreements.
Improving decisions: increases listening, nuance, and creativity; less herd mentality.
In short: grounding creates the physiological and relational conditions for thoughtful, inclusive, and wise group thinking.
Four Deep Cleansing Breaths
It is a boutique consultancy specializing in liberatory, human-centered systems design, change management, and community research. We partner with cities, schools, nonprofits and municipal and federal governments to co-create equitable strategies and data-informed action that centers lived experience.
Goals
Equip C-RAC to practice community-led research with integrity by:
Grounding inquiry in Baltimore’s histories through land acknowledgment and historical framing to situate present-day inequities; and
Deepening awareness of identity, positionality, and lived experience in shaping research design, interpretation, and use;
Establishing learning-team strategies and group norms that create safe space for narrative reflection, collective analysis, and ethical decision-making;
Interrogating power dynamics that determine whose voices and knowledge are valued and how community perspectives are integrated;
Articulating how their own lived experiences inform worldview, research interpretation, and participation in decisionmaking spaces.
LEARNING TEAM STRATEGIES
What do you need to thrive in this space?
• Power-sharing: Decisions, data, and dollars are shared (co-lead, not consult).
Liberatory Praxis:
The Operating Ethos
• Reflexivity: Ongoing positionality checks; name who we are, how we’re seen, and how that shapes the work.
• Repair & reciprocity: Benefits flow back to communities (stipends, skills, ownership, policy wins).
• Trauma-informed + culturally rooted: Care, consent, language justice, and ancestral/cultural practices are built in.
• Data equity: Community controls meaning, access, use, and storage (data sovereignty).
Liberatory CPAR framework in Baltimore:
Baltimore is a city of deep-rooted inequities and profound innovation.
• Honoring the ancestral legacies of survival and mutual aid.
• Acknowledging harm caused by extractive research practices.
• Cultivating participatory processes that heal, restore, and redistribute
Story circles / community listening sessions –group narratives surfaced via guided prompts.
Traditional CPAR -
Qualitative
Key informant & peer interviews – semi-structured, often youth/elder led.
Focus groups – small groups with shared identity/place; use inclusive ground rules.
Most Significant Change (MSC) – participants select and discuss the most impactful change story.
Participatory observation / community walks –document space, interactions, barriers, assets.
Breakout
What music genre represents how you are feeling this morning?
Classical Hip Hop Jazz Rock
Latin Country R&B Alternative, House| Afro Beats| Reggie| Soka | Amapiano
Where did you go to school in Baltimore?
What is the narrative story about these schools and the people who attended?
“Until the lion learns to speak the story will always be told by the hunter”
African Proverb
Looking Through Your Telescope
• Worldview
• Religion/Spiritual Practice
• Socio-Economic
• Politics
• Education
• Language/Communication
• Age
• Race
• Gender
• Lived experience
Positionality
Positionality is your situated standpoint in relation to systems of power—how your social identities, roles, and experiences (e.g., race, gender, class, ability, age, citizenship, language, profession, insider/outsider status) shape what you notice, how others respond to you, and how you interpret and act in the world. It’s contextual and dynamic (changes across settings) and reflexive (requires ongoing selfexamination).
Identity, Positionality, and Lived Experience
Competencies:
• Ability to articulate one’s own positionality (identity, worldview, social location).
• Understanding how lived experience influences perspective, values, and the interpretation of data.
• Skills in reflective practice (narrative sharing, positionality statements).
• Increased sensitivity to identity differences within research teams.
“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others”
W.E.B. Du Bois
Social Location
Social location is a person’s relative position in a group or society’s hierarchy—how much respect, prestige, and standing they’re seen to have. It’s shaped by things like wealth, education, occupation, age, gender, race/ethnicity, fame, and community roles, and it can differ across settings (high status at church, lower at work, etc.).
• Ascribed status: given at birth or involuntarily (e.g., age, family background).
• Achieved status: earned through actions (e.g., degree, job title, awards).
• Objective vs. subjective: measurable markers (income, title) vs. perceived esteem.
• Status inconsistency: mixed signals (e.g., high education, low-paying job).
• Status symbols: signals people use to display status (titles, credentials, attire).
Historical and Structural Analysis
Competency: Applies an understanding of Baltimore’s sociopolitical and economic history to frame research questions and interpret data.
Practice in Baltimore: Integrates analysis of racial zoning, urban renewal, and the war on drugs into the inquiry design to expose root causes rather than symptoms.
Liberatory Skill: Connects community narratives to systems-level determinants (housing, education, environmental justice, policing) to advance structural repair.
Community as Co-Researchers
Practice in Baltimore: Recognizes local organizations, Elders, and
Youth as knowledge bearers.
Employs circle processes, Storytelling and community listening sessions are considered valid data collection methods.
“Informed by the Village and Led by the Data”
Fight
Blight Bmore
Fight Blight Bmore Hood Hike
• What did we learn about the conditions of the Old West Baltimore/Harlem Park Community from our Hood Hike. History?
• What policies got us here?
• What impact does it have on physical, economic and social health of the residents?
TheAnatomyofBaltimore’s Blight:AnalysisofPolicyand PracticeCreatingaPathwayfor CommunityProgress
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
—
Frederick Douglass,
Power is the capacity to shape outcomes—your own or others’—by influencing people, resources, rules, or meaning.
Six (6) Kinds of Power
Formal Economic Relational
Narrative Procedural Coercive/Regulatory
Break OutPOWER MAPPING
1
Each group will decide on the definition of six (6) kinds of power.
2
Each group will take one category.
3
Spend eight (8) minutes defining each category and how these forms of power show up in community.
4
Identify a reporter that will take no more than two(2) minutes to report to large group
How we give power away (often unintentionally)
• Silence/abstention: not showing up, not voting, not commenting on rules
• Fragmentation: infighting, personality politics, single-issue silos
• Gatekeeping: hoarding contacts, info, or credit; unpaid “diversity labor”
• Tokenism: seats without votes; advisory with no decision authority
• Process traps: meetings with no decisions; burdensome RFPs; jargon walls
• Dependency: single funder reliance; accepting “pilot only” money with no path to permanence
• Data extraction: letting outsiders collect stories/data without community ownership, consent, or benefit
• No succession: leaders for life; no pipeline for youth and new organizers
• Respectability/perfectionism: waiting for the “perfect” plan; letting fear of critique stop action
• Define the target outcome
• List actor universe
• Map authority/procedure
• Follow the money
POWER MAPPING |
• Follow land/assets
• Map relationships
• Surface narrative power
• Equity & risk check
How communities assign power
Formal
• Charters, bylaws, MOUs, contracts, zoning, budgets, board seats, voting rules
• Who controls public money, land, data, and enforcement
Informal
• Social capital & gatekeeping (who gets the call, the mic, the grant)
• Cultural authority (faith leaders, elders, “OG” organizers, influencers)
• Narrative control (who defines the problem/solution in media & meetings)
• Expertise definitions (whose knowledge counts as “evidence”)
Practical telltales
• Agenda-setting: who sets topics and timing?
• Veto points: who can say “no” and stop a thing?
• Pay & perks: who is paid, who is volunteering?
• Data ownership: who holds the data and decides how it’s used?
Review | Liberatory Practice
• Competency: Integrates traumainformed and healing-centered engagement methods that prioritize community safety and restoration.
HealingCentered Research Praxis
• Practice in Baltimore: Begins meetings with mindfulness, ritual, or land and ancestral remembrance, acknowledges collective grief and historical harm; incorporates artistic and spiritual practices in reflection.
• Liberatory Skill: Recognizes that the research process itself can be reparative when grounded in care, compassion, and cultural affirmation.
Competency: Facilitates spaces for communities to interpret data and define next steps for advocacy, policy, and practice.
Collective Interpretation and Action
Practice in Baltimore: Engages community councils, block associations, and youth leaders to translate findings into actions that align with local self-determination goals.
Liberatory Skill: Ensures that research culminates in mobilization, funding, or programmatic shifts that benefit the community directly.
• Competency: Translates communitygenerated knowledge into policy recommendations that advance justice.
Policy and Systems Integration
• Practice in Baltimore: Connects findings to city health equity frameworks, neighborhood revitalization plans, and participatory budgeting efforts.
• Liberatory Skill: Acts as a bridge between grassroots insight and institutional reform—without diluting community power or intent.
• Competency: Commits to mutual benefit, transparency, and ongoing relationships beyond the research timeline.
Ethics of Reciprocity and Accountability
• Practice in Baltimore: Practices radical honesty around resources, deliverables, and ownership. Offers stipends, coauthorship, and public acknowledgment for community partners.
• Liberatory Skill: Views accountability not as compliance but as a living covenant rooted in trust, shared learning, and repair.
• Competency: Uses storytelling and cultural expression to validate and archive community wisdom.
Narrative Power and Cultural Sustainability
• Practice in Baltimore: Partners with local artists, griots, and culture bearers to transform data into creative works— murals, podcasts, exhibitions—that sustain cultural memory.
• Liberatory Skill: Treats narrative reclamation as an act of resistance against erasure and as a form of data sovereignty.
SAMPLES OF CPAR
Baltimore Uprising | Community Listening & Healing Circles
Home is Where the Heart is: Listening Session
• During the 5-year Anniversary of Baltimore Ceasefire 365, The Baltimore Family Alliance, Audacity Group and #MyBmore Project invited Baltimore families to a listening session to meet, organize and manifest change in Charm City.
The Summer Engagement Ecosystem (SEE)
Mapping and strengthening Baltimore’s summer program infrastructure. SEE is a citywide network that connects youth, families, and community partners to highquality summer programs and opportunities. By aligning resources, strengthening partnerships, and expanding access, SEE ensures that young people across Baltimore have safe, enriching, and equitable experiences that foster growth, connection, and discovery during the summer months.
The Youth Well-Being
Landscape
Defining and measuring youth well-being from the perspective of young people themselves. As a city, we must invest in building and sustaining a holistic system of wraparound supports that is well-coordinated, adequately funded, and grounded in youth voice. This ecosystem must respond to the diverse realities of young people and ensure equitable access so no one is left without the resources they need. This landscape report will be driven by the lived experiences of youth as they navigate the often fragmented support system
What is“youth well-being”?
A dynamic state in which young people (typically 10–24) have the capabilities, resources, and conditions to feel well, do well, and become who they aspire to be—in developmentally appropriate and culturally grounded ways. It blends:
Subjective experience (how youth feel about life)
Relational context (family, peers, mentors, community)
Developmental fit (what’s age- and stage-appropriate)
Objective conditions (the environments and opportunities around them)
Co-Creating Research Questions
Example (SEE & Youth Well-Being)
• Theme from stories: “I couldn’t get to programs on time; buses were unreliable after 7pm.”
• Draft HMW: “How might we guarantee safe, reliable rides home for teens after evening programs?”
• Refined question: “Among teens in Upton and Sandtown ages 13–17, what specific time, route, and safety barriers limit evening program attendance, and which transportation solutions (shuttle, micro-stipend, program schedule shift) do youth prefer and use?”
• Decision hook: Inform 2026 summer transit MOUs and schedule changes by February.
Pitfalls to avoid
VAGUE/OVERBROAD: (“WHAT DO YOUTH NEED?”) → ANCHOR TO A DECISION AND A POPULATION.
INSTITUTION-FIRST WORDING: REPHRASE IN YOUTH LANGUAGE.
DATA EXTRACTIVISM: IF IT WON’T CHANGE A DECISION OR RESOURCE, DON’T ASK IT.
SINGLE-METHOD BIAS: PAIR STORIES WITH AT LEAST ONE METRIC (OR VICE VERSA).
Suggested Reading | CPAR / CBPR in Urban Communities
• Minkler &Wallerstein (eds.), Community-Based Participatory Research for Health: Advancing Social & Health Equity (3rded.) gold-standard handbook with urban case studies and equity tools. Israel, B.A. et al., “Community-Based
• Participatory Research: A Capacity-Building Approach” (2010) practical framework forpartnerships and policy change, widely cited in city health equity work.
• Baum, MacDougall &Smith, “Participatory Action Research” (2006) — concise PAR primer(great for teaching CPARbasics). Whyte, Participatory Action Research (1991) classic methods text on co-generation of knowledge and action.
• Collins et al., “Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR)” (2018) overview article emphasizing action + equity; good quick assignableread. PCCPH CBPR Resource Guide curated methods & practice resources you can pull into an urban CPAR syllabus.
• Compact’s Community-Based Research: Selected Readings (2024) updated list to refresh your syllabus with recent engaged scholarship.
W.E.B. Du Bois |
• The Souls of Black Folk (1903),“Of Our Spiritual Strivings” — Canonical articulation of double-consciousness, a direct precursor to contemporary “positionality”: seeing oneself through a dominant gaze while holding one’s own standpoint.
Frantz Fanon
Suggested Reading | Positionality
• Black Skin, White Masks (1952) — Especially Chapter 5: “The Lived Experience of the Black Man” (a.k.a. “Fact of Blackness”). Fanon dissects how the colonial/white gaze positions Black subjectivity, offering a foundational account of positionality under racial domination
• The Wretched of the Earth (1961) — For how national/colonial structures script identities and voice in public life.
Suggested Reading
bell hooks
• Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994) — Core chapters on engaged pedagogy and the politics of voice show how identity and location shape who is heard in classrooms and public life.
Dr. Lawrence Brown
• Dr. Lawrence T. Brown’s The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America?
Baltimore’s Promise is a city-wide collaborative of public, business, higher education, nonprofit, community, and philanthropic leaders.
We harness the power of data and collaboration to achieve better outcomes for Baltimore’s youth and their families.
Baltimore City Youth Data Hub
• The Baltimore City Youth Data Hub is an integrated data system that links data across youth-serving organizations into an anonymous system subject to community oversight and strict guidelines. The Youth Data Hub exists to improve quality of life outcomes for young people in Baltimore City. It was codified in 2022.
• The Youth Data Hub brings communities, providers, policymakers and researchers together in partnership to make informed decisions as they create and implement programs and policies designed to eliminate disparities and achieve equitable outcomes for the success of Baltimore’s youth and families.
• With the Youth Data Hub, stakeholders can better understand interrelated needs of communities and compare services and outcomes across groups by gender, race/ethnicity, place, and program-specific subpopulations to address inequities in resources and opportunities.
The
