The Journal of Critical Research Methodologies (JCRM), published by CDS Press, is a peer-reviewed journal that provides readers with a distinctive lens through which to examine research. JCRM serves as a platform to explore issues of oppression, colonization, and self-determination, challenging conventional research methods. Its emergence reflects the current need for new research approaches as the world rapidly changes.
Grounded in an ethic of non-violent care, JCRM promotes research methodologies that emphasize teaching, relational research, and the inclusion of marginalized groups. It encourages reimagining research as a process that is respectful, ethical, and politically informed, valuing the histories and lived experiences of marginalized communities. The journal challenges traditional practices by drawing on ethical frameworks from Indigenous knowledge systems, Black and African diasporic thought, critical feminisms, anti-racism, and other anti-oppressive approaches. JCRM aims to reshape research to be relational, political, and historically aware.
JCRM is a scholarly, multidisciplinary, and internationally refereed publication with a primary focus on Asia, Africa, and South America. Its areas of interest include social work, education, history, Indigenous studies, religion, environmental studies, anthropology, cultural studies, social sciences, and the humanities. The journal publishes two issues per year.
Overview
JCRM critically examines the practices and processes of “research ethics” beyond their dominant Western conceptualization. Traditionally, research ethics have been treated as procedural guidelines to be followed by neutral social scientists observing their subjects. This journal, however, seeks to reimagine research beyond these Eurocentric frameworks, offering space for marginalized ways of knowing to “speak back.”
JCRM highlights the experiences of people crossing “seas and oceans” as essential to developing new methodologies for decolonizing dominant research approaches. Those who were once objects of study now seek to voice their own narratives, while acknowledging the distinct position they hold compared to traditional researchers.
This approach reimagines the ethics of research, encouraging researchers to embrace the discomfort of being in unsettled waters or foreign lands as an ethical responsibility. Acknowledging that researchers cannot fully understand the “other” is central to amplifying subjugated voices through transnational perspectives. This “subterranean” dialogue brings forth rich narratives that challenge and transform research practices, rooting them in the lived experiences and values of marginalized communities, and fostering social justice.