This seminar focuses on an ongoing action research project to support Syrian academics in exile in Turkey through the Council for At Risk Academics’ Syria Programme.

Syria Programme was launched in 2016 to provide regional support to Syrian academics still in the Middle East. As of September 2018 there are over 250 academics registered with the programme. The programme involves online language tutoring, research training residential workshops held every three months in Istanbul, and a mentoring scheme. Participatory action research involves collaborating with communities to directly improve their circumstances through iterative phases of reconnaissance, action, analysis and adaptation.

In this seminar I will give an overview of the project to date, before focusing on two phases of reconnaissance, for which large group processes were used to generate insight into the Syria Programme participants’ academic development needs. I outline a trialectic framework for educational action research, before discussing some of the methodological, analytical and ethical challenges that have arisen and which are germane to participatory action research more generally, centring in particular around the relationship between outsider and insider participant-researchers.