Q&A with Dr. Roman Williams
We are thrilled to welcome Roman Williams to the Contexts blog to celebrate the publication of his new book, Sacred Snaps: Photovoice for Interfaith Engagement. In this post, blog editor Elena van Stee chats with Roman about his photography-driven approach to participatory action research—what Roman calls “sociology with the public.” They discuss how Roman is using the tools of sociology to study intergroup engagement and foster greater understanding across religious and other social divides. You can watch the full interview above and find lightly edited excerpts from their conversation below.
Elena van Stee (EVS): To start out, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what you mean by “sociology for the public.” What’s this version of sociology that you’re practicing these days?
Roman Williams (RA): Well, I often talk about it as a prepositional shift in my work. As a sociologist, I’m trained to be a sociologist of religion, a sociologist of culture—there’s hardly a sociologist out there who doesn’t have “of” in front of some subfield. Many times, that, to me, has felt like I kind of put a parachute on… and I sneak around in uncharted territory and then go back to my office and write up what I observed. And then I send that off to a peer-reviewed journal, and it gets published behind some paywall, and the people I wrote about don’t have access to it. I don’t mean to disparage the discipline, but that’s how it feels sometimes.
That’s the “sociology of.” And don’t get me wrong, that’s important work. But there’s this other side that I like to think of as “sociology with.” And that’s more like me showing up on the playground with my little bucket full of toys and walking up to a place where other people are playing in that sandbox and saying, “Here are my toys. How can we play with these together?”
This sometimes falls under the heading of what we think of as “participatory action research,” where the researcher [has] expertise because of their background and training, but so do the people they’re working with. They’re experts on their own daily lives, their experiences, and the challenges that they might be facing in the world. “Sociology with” invites them to be full participants, not subjects. It invites them to have agency in the process. …Over my career, I’ve made that shift from, you know, “jumping out of planes” to “playing in sandboxes,” if you will.EVS: Practically, what this shift has looked like in your career? How has your work changed?
RW: Well, can we just say what day it is? I mean, are we allowed to say what today is?
EVS: Absolutely.
RW: Today is November 6th, 2024, the day after the election. And as I told some British friends I had breakfast with, I’m keeping a stiff upper lip today. I’m being brave. The outcome of the election wasn’t the one that I had hoped for, and it took me back to the Fall of 2016 when I began to be concerned about things that were said on the campaign trail about brown-skinned people from other countries who happened to be Muslim, and how they would be treated in the world.
I started having conversations with friends about that, and in the back of my mind were these words [from theologian] Gustavo Gutierrez…: “You say you’re concerned for the poor… tell me their names.” And if someone said, “Roman, you say you’re concerned about Muslim people… tell me their names,” that would have been a really short list. …And then [I had] a conversation with a friend who happens to be a minister who had a really deep interfaith background… and over a breakfast, we put together their interest in interfaith understanding and cooperation with my tools as a visual sociologist.
I use a tool called photovoice. …It comes out of public health, and it’s designed to equip people to use their cameras to go out in the world to document daily life around a set of experiences, needs, concerns, problems. …I’m constantly asking people… “What do your beliefs, your values, your practices look like in everyday life?” …and [then they gather and] have a conversation about their photographs. …And you see some really important things happening, like relationships being built, some religious literacy being transferred, a bit of empathy when someone who is not Muslim realizes the real challenge of fitting [the [practice of prayer] into their daily life.And then we put on an exhibit, maybe it’s at a library or at a house of worship, or maybe it’s a proper museum, and we invite people from the community that need to hear those stories. Maybe a topic about personal safety in public comes up. We want to make sure that local law enforcement is invited to the opening night celebration for that exhibit so that the participant can then share their experiences and do some self-advocacy. And that’s where photovoice gets its name: the photograph gives someone a voice in their community.
EVS: You’ve told us about the “participation” and the “action” components of participatory action research. What’s the “research” side of it?
RW: For this project that our book is written around, we wanted to try to understand how this tool, photovoice, could be used to build bridges between people from different religious backgrounds. We did three exploratory projects. One was in Richmond, Virginia. One was in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which is where I live. And the third one was in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, at a university there. And in each of these projects, [there were] anywhere from 15 to 25 Christians and Muslims that came together to have these conversations and then ultimately put on these exhibitions. Along the way, we treated those projects ethnographically. We were taking field notes. We were taking our own photographs. …And then, after we completed each of those projects, we interviewed half of the people who had gone through it to try to understand what had happened and to learn from them about the process.
There are many conclusions we can draw from the body of data, but what I want to focus on is the interpersonal change that can happen through interactions like [those that occur in a photovoice project]. …It’s not the kind of structural change that we as sociologists know to be important, but it’s the beginning of that. The change has to start somewhere. …We have seen changes happen in organizations and in communities—changes that are small and incremental, but it’s movement. It’s movement in a positive direction.
Roman Williams is the founder of Interfaith Photovoice, an organization that combines photography and sociology for intergroup and interfaith engagement. He is the author of Sacred Snaps: Photovoice for Interfaith Engagement. Elena G. van Stee is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. The blog editor for Contexts, she studies culture and inequality, focusing on families, higher education, and the transition to adulthood.
