The Centre for Critical Qualitative Health Research (CQ) is pleased to invite you to join us on March 20, 2026 for a CQ Public Seminar titled ‘Kwentuhan as Research Methodology‘ with Drs. Valerie Francisco-Menchavez, Ilyan Ferrer, and PhD Candidate Christa Sato.
Event Details
Seminar Speakers: Dr. Valerie Francisco-Menchavez, Dr. Ilyan Ferrer, and PhD Candidate Christa Sato
Title: Kwentuhan as Research Methodology
Date and Time: March 20, 2026 | 12pm to 1.30pm (EST)
Venue: (Online) Zoom
Register here.
Seminar Description
This session introduces kwentuhan, a Filipino epistemology and storytelling through conversational exchanges and community building, as a qualitative methodology and decolonial praxis for research justice in health and social inquiry. We frame kwentuhan as a community-held, relational approach that foregrounds reciprocity, shared stories, and embodied/experiential and intergenerational knowledges. Responding to CQ’s focus on justice-oriented praxis, we conceptualize research justice as collective governance over questions, meanings, and uses of knowledge, as well as accountability to communities experiencing racialization, im/migration, care work precarity, labor exploitation, and gendered violence. Drawing from our respective works on communities of care, intergenerational im/migration and aging, we present case examples on how kwentuhan reorients research toward community priorities; enacts rigor through relationality, resonance, and collective analysis; and mobilizes findings via formats that sustain social justice (such as the creation of zines, community art exhibits, audio narratives, teach-ins, and policy dialogues). We discuss tensions and opportunities in navigating institutional timelines and REB protocols, practicing layered translation, negotiating power within/between Filipino communities, and resisting extractive “inclusion” through shared responsibilities in design, data generation, analysis, and mobilization.
About the speakers:
Valerie Francisco-Menchavez is an award-winning scholar-activist, researcher, writer and educator whose academic and political work calls attention to the experiences of Filipina migrants in care work industries and their indelible abilities to form solidarities and organize with one another. Her body of work aims to recognize the multifaceted experiences of migration and transnationalism for people in the Filipina/x/o diaspora exploring their communities of care, political activism, conditions of low-wage domestic work, and intergenerational dialogue. Her most recent book, Caring for Caregivers: Filipina Migrant Workers and Community Building during Crisis (2024), is a transformative look at the lives of Filipina care workers and their mutual aid practices in the San Francisco Bay Area from 2013 to 2021. Dr. Francisco is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University.
Christa Sato is a Lecturer in the School of Social Work at University of British Columbia (Northwest Campus) and PhD Candidate in the FIFSW, University of Toronto. Her PhD research focuses on applying a decolonial Pinayist (Filipina feminist) lens to explore the ways in which diasporic Filipino/a/x in Canada make meaning of suffering, resistance, and healing from intergenerational trauma impacts.
Ilyan Ferrer is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at Carleton University, and serves as the Anglophone Editor for the Canadian Social Work Review. His research focuses on the intersections of aging, im/migration, labour, and care exchanges of racialized communities in Canada. Ilyan’s work incorporates intersectionality, digital storytelling, and anti-oppressive social work theory and practice.
Suggested Readings:
Pino, F. (2023). Connecting With Older Queer Filipinos Through Kuwento: Toward an Intergenerational Queer and Decolonial Qualitative Research Methods. Intersectionalities : A Global Journal of Social Work Analysis, Research, Polity and Practice, 11(1), 64–79.
Gutierrez, R. A. E., Piñon, H., & Valmocena, M. T. (2023). Co-Creating Knowledge with Undocumented Filipino Students “Kuwentuhan” as a Research Method. New Directions for Higher Education, 2023(203), 77–92. https://doi.org/10.1002/he.20478
Francisco-Menchavez, Valerie, and Edwin Carlos. “Kuwentuhan across Generations: Intergenerational Participatory Methods in Exploring Filipino Immigrant and Filipino American Transnational Experiences.” In The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Participatory Inquiry in Transnational Research Contexts, pp. 238-249. Routledge, 2023.
2026 CQ Seminar Series on Research Justice as Praxis
CQ’s 2026 seminar series explores how qualitative inquiry can function as a site of justice-oriented praxis. Across disciplines, researchers, students, practitioners, and community partners are grappling with questions of power, representation, ethics, and meaning-making in health research. The series invites reflection on how critical qualitative methodologies—shaped by Indigenous, feminist, anti-racist, decolonial, queer, Afrocentric, and disability justice traditions—can challenge inequities and foster more relational, accountable, and transformative approaches to knowledge production.
Through talks, panels, and dialogues, the series examines how research design, data generation, analysis, and representation can advance equity, dignity, and social change. The series is open to all who are interested in deepening their methodological practice and engaging diverse ways of knowing in the pursuit of health and social justice.
Learn more about the 2026 CQ Seminar Series here.
