The Story Lab

The Story Lab is the university-based partner of Mitochondrial Breakfast. Here we conduct research, evaluation, and policy work through grants, coursework, student collaboration, and internships.

Founding Director: Dr. Lisa J. Hardy

Affiliated Faculty: Dr. Leah Mundell, Dr. Corina Kellner, Dr. Eric Otenyo, Dr. Ken Roark

Location: Northern Arizona University - Bilby Research Center, Room 131 and 131a

The Story Lab serves as a central location for learning and best practices for community-engaged research and storytelling in northern Arizona. Faculty, students, and community partners develop and implement interdisciplinary projects in community engagement, social justice, youth participation, and creative arts research. With a focus on storytelling related to medical anthropology and community health, partners develop projects and conduct training sessions on ethics, primary data collection, mixed-methods analysis, and dissemination of findings through professional presentations and publications.

The lab provides research, training, and opportunities for storytelling for social change and related active research projects that include faculty, undergraduate, and graduate student collaboration. The lab offers opportunities in community engagement, the development of op-eds, collaborative writing, journal editing, and the development of policy recommendations for students and partners.

We welcome new community partners and undergraduate and graduate students as interns and researchers. Students are also welcome to participate in the lab for course credit in active projects including through Community and University Public Inquiry.

Examples of recent research include:

Building partnerships for community engaged healthcare for birthing people in eastern Arizona; Sociocultural Dimensions of Covid-19—faculty, graduate students, and international collaborators conducting a mixed-methods investigation of life during Covid-19; Interview, focus group, and data analysis workshops; Supporting Immigrant Families in Flagstaff Schools—faculty and undergraduate researchers collaborate with Flagstaff Unified School District and Northern Arizona Interfaith Council to support improved language access services, teacher training, and parent engagement; Immigration and Public Health—faculty and graduate students implementing mixed-methods research to assess impacts of immigration policy on health and wellness in Arizona

Selected publications from story lab projects and collaborations:

• Staying safe in the time of coronavirus: pay attention to ‘the guy you know’

• “As Arizona coronavirus cases surge from early reopening, Indigenous nations suffer not only more COVID-19 but also the blame”

• Tribes mount organized responses to COVID-19, in contrast to state and federal governments

• How do Americans view the virus? Anthropology professor examines attitudes, perceptions of COVID-19

• GovExec Daily: Native Communities, the Federal Government and the Pandemic

Selected bios

Roxana Cardiel is the Organizer for Northern Arizona Interfaith Council and its education and training arm, Northern Arizona Institutions for Community Leadership. Her work focuses on building leadership for civic participation across lines of race, class, age, and religion and organizing for issues that advance the common good. She is also a graduate student in the Masters in Sustainable Communities program at NAU and the graduate facilitator for the Immigrant Youth Equity research pod.

Lisa J Hardy, PhD, MA is a Professor of Anthropology and author. She is the founding director of the Social Science Community Engagement Story Lab and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Practicing Anthropology. Current research and writing includes youth-led investigations of generational outcomes related to living through lockdown and arts-based poetry as methods training and workshops. Dr. Hardy presents workshops and keynotes on public scholarship and storytelling and authored a recent toolkit on storytelling together.

Leah Mundell, PhD, is an Associate Teaching Professor in Anthropology and coordinator for the Community Engagement Minor in the Sustainable Communities program. Her applied research has focused primarily on migration and issues affecting immigrant families in the U.S. and South Africa, from a community organizing perspective.

Ken Roark, PhD, MA, is an applied anthropologist and STS researcher with over 20 years of ethnographic and design research experience in the U.S. and Canada. They are the founder and primary investigator at Sky Island Design Research LLC, a design research practice specializing in participatory design, visual ethnography and shared decision making. Current creative projects include NUDGE: a serious game about queer/trans surveillance (Queer Tech Futures) and THE GULF BETWEEN (pre-production), a personal documentary about the Gulf of Mexico.

Taylor Schweikert is an graduate of Women’s and Gender Studies and Sociology. She served as an integral team member on the project Socio-cultural Dimensions of Covid-19, with a focus on youth arts-based research. She is a recipient of the Student-led Projects in the Arts and Creative Activity (SPArCS) award, and is interested in youth advocacy and mental health, story sharing, and arts-based research–especially when they all intertwine.

Carly Thompson-Camptior, MA is a Ph.D. candidate in Interdisciplinary Health. Her research interests include contested illness experience, persistent Lyme disease, patient advocacy, embodied health movements, and medical knowledge production. Her lab work includes research, analysis, and writing.