Research Goals:
- How can I bridge the gap between academia and lived experiences and create a comprehensive archive of materials from different perspectives?
- How can I collect diverse materials in a way that challenges the monolithic narrative of cancer in society?
- Out of all the perspectives that construct cancer as a whole, is there a way to include as many of them as possible and to critically evaluate the relationship between these perspectives?
My goal is to create a comprehensive, holistic archive on colon cancer, and the collection can include scientific papers and reviews, epidemiological studies and ethnographic studies, illness narratives (written, audiobook, informal and group sharing on social media, blogs, etc… ), media representations through analysis of campaigns, in literature, TV shows and some policy documents.
The idea arose out of my own desire to widen access to information for patients with colon cancer and people at high-risk for colon cancer, and so originally I had intended for the archive to be patient-centered.
However, as it’s important to bridge the gap between academia and lived experiences, I wanted to have other audiences, such as policymakers, doctors, and researchers be able to look at this website too. Although I would still like to keep the archive organized and visualized in a way that’s most friendly to patients and the common people (i.e. non-professionals), it can still be studied and looked at by professionals in the field. The archive should reflect the multifaceted nature of cancer in society.
