department news

Department launches Center for Local Strategies Research

The Department of Communication announces the creation of the Center for Local Strategies Research at the University of Washington. Professor Gerry Philipsen and Dr. Lisa Coutu, faculty members in the Department, serve as, respectively, Director and Associate Director of the Center.

The purpose of the new Center is to support the investigation of tactical processes for managing and improving social life that are developed in, and indigenous to, a given locale or community. It involves not only local tactics, enacted and articulated, but also local notions of the problematic and the possible in social life.

As such, the Center is concerned with a wide array of human situations, both foreign and domestic. Some current projects of the Center’s Associate Scholars include security in post conflict regions, negotiations of services by refugees and displaced persons living in a host community, efforts to reduce school dropout rates in economically distressed districts, efforts of patients to navigate the difficult shoals of organized medical systems, and participation by citizens in the design and implementation of local services and community improvement programs.

In explaining the local strategies research, Philipsen says that it best proceeds, in the words of Matthew B. Crawford, as a concerted effort to “be attentive in the way of a conversation rather than assertive in the way of a demonstration” (Shopcraft as Soulcraft, 2009, p. 82). Philipsen and Coutu say the Center was founded because such conversation is too often neglected in, but crucial to the success of, projects that aim to affect the lives of people in their communities. They are particularly concerned with bringing to projects concerned with social betterment at the local level a methodology for engaging in, and learning systematically from, such attentive conversations. The Center is concerned not only to apply that methodology, but to study it, to teach it, and to find ways to assess it and improve it, through reflective practice.

At present the Center has ten Associate Scholars, located in several parts of the world. Each of these scholars pursues intensive fieldwork in difficult situations with an eye to producing research that will be of value to the local communities in which the research is conducted. Each of the ten Associate Scholars has at one time studied fieldwork methods through the Department of Communication at the University of Washington, and they come from several disciplines, including communication, nursing, and information science. During the next six months Philipsen and Coutu will be expanding the roster of Associate Scholars, and thus will increase the global reach of the Center's work. New Associate Scholars will be recruited not only from the ranks of former students in the Department, but from several other institutions.

You can see the website of the new Center at www.localstrategiesresearch.washington.edu, a site that was created with the design support of Filiz Efe, a student in the Department's Master of Communication in Digital Media program. Check out the site to get some flavor of the work being done as part of this new initiative.