Research as healing: A critical participatory action research approach to Asian Americans healing from racial trauma

I received the Division 56 Cultivating Healing, Advocacy, Nonviolence, Growth, and Equity (CHANGE) Grant to support this work. Using critical participatory action research (CPAR) as a praxis, the proposed study brings together a team of Asian American young adults as citizen scientists to co-design a mixed methods study to better understand:

1. What do Asian Americans do to heal from racial stress and trauma?

2. Do these actions lessen the harmful impacts of racism?

3. Who does or does not engage in radical healing?

4. Can participation in CPAR among citizen scientists engage radical healing processes that mitigate racial stress and trauma?

Through this work, I hope to explore the idea that the act of participatory research itself can be healing from racial stress and trauma.