Participation Right Now: an interdisciplinary in-conversation

Hosted by Postgraduate Researcher Yang Feng , this in-conversation activity brings together Dr Helen Graham, Dr Emily Gray and Siyuan Zhao to reflect on today’s participatory culture.

To date, participatory practices have continued to proliferate and expand across society and academia, across disciplines ranging from the humanities and culture to the sciences, as a method, an object, measure of impact or a combination of all three. But, why?

Since the 1990s, participation has flourished across cultural, civic, media, and technological domains, often framed as a means of generating social good while bearing democratic and humanist ideals. Today, this perception of participation seems to have become normative in understanding participation’s exponential growth as a field, method or object of study. However, is participation necessarily or inherently good?

Premised on questioning these views, Participation Right Now is an interdisciplinary in-conversation event. Participation Right Now aims to delve into the overlapped understandings of participation across diverse spheres, including culture and science, and reflects on the changes and problems appearing throughout the last three decades through a roundtable discussion. 

The discussion will be led by the following questions:

Where are we from?

• When and how did participatory practices become widely developed and institutionally encouraged, such as in cultural contexts and technology design?

Where are we now?

• Why do participatory practices continue to expand, and is this expansion related to digitisation?

Where are we going?

• Will participation continue to proliferate and expand, or might it encounter constraints in the future?

Speakers will share their critical insights and unveil the difficulties behind the ‘idealised illusion’ of participation based on their various research and practices. The discussion will be followed by a Q&A and networking sessions.

There is no need to book and all are welcome.

Tea, coffee and biscuits will be provided.

About the speakers

Dr Helen Graham is an Associate Professor in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds.  Her recently published book, Deconstituting Museums: Participation’s Affective Work (2025), delves into participatory practices within the museum sphere, locating participation not as engagement but as a mode of governance that is enabled by, and enables, variant political ontologies.

Dr Emily Gray is a curator and researcher working across contemporary art and archives, with a focus on exhibition-making as research, feminist approaches, and emerging sensory methodologies. She is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Henry Moore Institute, where she is researching the work of Shelagh Wakely.

Siyuan Zhao is the fourth-year Postgraduate Researcher in the School of Design at the University of Leeds. She researches design studies of technology in the widest sense and their involvement of participatory methods. Her thesis title is Smart Textile: Employing Human-Centered Design to Integrate Functional Materials and Textile Components for Healthcare.

Yang Feng is a third-year Postgraduate Researcher in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds. Her doctoral research studies how the digital changes the ways of engaging and participating with/in art for and beyond humans. Her thesis title is Participation in a Posthuman and Post-digital Age: Digital Participatory Art from 2019-present.

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.