In July 2026, the Women’s Health Research Institute (WHRI) offered a Qualitative Research Summer Student Series for the first time ever. Designed and facilitated by WHRI Qualitative Research Analyst Julia Santana Parrilla, the series was conceptualized as a sequential two-parter to engage attendees in critical reflections of research philosophies and equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) principles. The aim was to explore, express and establish personal commitments foundational to research decision-making, and critical appraisal of qualitative health research.
Session one was titled: mapping “ologies”: integrating body and mind in research
Session two was: finding alignment: querying research decision-making with poetry
Both sessions centered arts-based methods to facilitate explorations and affirm commitments; the first utilized body mapping and the second utilized found poetry.
The sessions were less about self-identifying with a certain “ology” or with a certain principle, and more about identifying and articulating how to integrate what feels important to each person into how they conduct their work.
Attendees received a workbook, developed in collaboration with Chelsey Perry (Manager, Indigenous Equity Lab) that guided both sessions’ activities. Chelsey also partnered with Julia for the first session. Inspired by journal clubs, registrants were sent an article to read in advance of gathering.
Sessions were hosted in-person on the BC Women’s Hospital + Health Centre campus. Upon entry, attendees were invited to pick up a workbook, a resources page, a sensory toy (provided by Live Educate Transform Society), and a Feels card (by All the Feels x Adri Creative) per the prompts provided. Attendees were asked to share their Feels card during their introductions, reflecting on how they felt entering the space.
Attendance was humble, generating a close, comfortable atmosphere. The wide range of experience among attendees (from incoming undergraduate students to professors), was conducive to rich discussions.
Much like qualitative research itself, these sessions centered relationality. Both sessions began with contextualizing overviews and invitations into collective tone-setting, as guided by Julia’s presentation and the workbook’s journaling prompts. Introductions to arts-based methods prefaced transitions into activities. During mapping “ologies”, attendees located their sense of reality (ontology), of coming to understand knowledge (epistemology), and of values (axiology) within a rendering of their bodies. Body mapping facilitated the grounding of abstract critical reflections into bodies, nurturing accountability into felt senses of value. In finding alignment, attendees re-searched and re-constructed meaning within an existing text to re-present the messages in ways that re-affirmed their commitments to EDI. Found poetry facilitated critical evaluations of commitments, relating with meaning in ways that celebrate nuance. Together, the sessions moved reflections from demonstrating what was understood toward modeling how that understanding was developed relationally, exercising pathways toward integrations in future works.
After the sessions, Julia followed up with all registrants regardless of attendance and shared:
- The workbook
- The resource page
- The anonymous evaluation survey
Respondents considered the sessions “[…] very thoughtful and engaging, and built nicely on the pre-reading which was very intentionally chosen and fed into the content nicely. Nice balance of activity and slide based learning as well.” And “The learning and understanding of the concepts explored in this workshop were clear and fleshed out, as the facilitator gave plenty of time for us to ask questions and set a safe space for conversation.”
Beyond responses to the evaluation survey, the success of these sessions was affirmed with invitations for Julia to be a guest lecturer, and to appear on a podcast. Attendees also expressed an interest in further offerings. Julia plans to run additional sessions on new topics in October – stay tuned for registration announcements. If you’re interested in learning more or attending sessions with Julia, please contact julia.santanaparrilla@cw.bc.ca