On March 20, 2026, CQ hosted a public seminar on kwentuhan—a Filipino epistemology of storytelling and relational exchange—featuring Dr. Valerie Francisco-Menchavez and Christa Sato, with contributions from Dr. Ilyan Ferrer through pre-seminar dialogue.
The session brought together approximately 50 participants across Canada and the United States, including graduate students, faculty, and community practitioners, many of whom shared personal stories from within the Filipino/a/x diaspora.
The seminar positioned kwentuhan as both a community practice and an expansive methodological approach. Rooted in migrant community life, it operates as a space for sharing “essential knowledge” while fostering connection, solidarity, and collective care. As a research methodology, kwentuhan was described as embodied, relational, and co-constructed, shaping all stages of the research process—from recruitment to analysis and mobilization—while repositioning participants as co-researchers. Its intergenerational dimensions were also highlighted, with youth participation helping to render legible experiences of marginalization often silenced within migrant communities.
Presenters challenged dominant methodological norms in higher education, unsettling extractive research practices and institutional ethics frameworks that prioritize standardization over relational accountability. Not all stories shared through kwentuhan are intended for institutional capture or publication.
Situated within CQ’s Research Justice as Praxis seminar series, the session revisited long-standing questions among critical qualitative health researchers: how to practice relational accountability seriously when drawing from community-held knowledge as a community member and someone affiliated with higher education? How might we rethink “data,” authorship, and ethics in ways that resist extraction? And what becomes possible when communities shape not only the content, but the purposes and uses of research?
