Panel Session 3
Department of Psychology & University Gender Hub
Thinking Differently about Being and Healing: Contributions of affective, rhizomatic, and embodied lenses to research in psychology
Moderator
Dr. Angelique Pearl Virtue P. Villasanta
Instructor, Department of Psychology
April 22, 2026 (Wednesday)
6:45 PM – 7:45 PM
One of the key issues in doing qualitative research in the social sciences today is the question of whether rigorous adherence to methodological guidelines leads us closer to the ‘truth’ of what we are studying—and whether this adherence genuinely serves the welfare of our participants. This panel engages with this issue by presenting three papers that employ creative qualitative frameworks to examine crucial psychological phenomena, namely the identity embodiment of transgender men, women’s healing from sexual violence, and navigating “ethically important moments” with participants and with each other as we do research on sensitive topics. We invite co-researchers to ‘think differently’ with us as we illustrate how affect theory helps us rethink the study of emotions and its role in transgender identity embodiment; how a rhizomatic lens allows us to rethink narratives of healing; and how an embodied feminist approach to ethics allows us to rethink how we do research itself. Through this, we hope to illustrate that by doing qualitative research creatively, in ways that honor both the heart of our research questions and our participants’ stories, we are able to challenge the dominant and sometimes oppressive paradigms of knowledge and knowledge production within psychology and forward more ethical and embodied ways of relating with our participants, with our fellow co-researchers, and with the research process itself.
An Affective Lens to Embodying Transgender Identity
Mibo Borres & Gilana Roxas
Department of Psychology
Within psychological research, an excess of negative emotions, or negative emotions that endure for too long, is considered pathological and undesirable. To manage them, these negative emotions are pathologized and medicated away. But this begs the question: In pathologizing emotions, how does it influence how we understand their complexity from a psychological lens? More importantly, what are the consequences to those bodies where these pathologized emotions are inhabited?
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These are some of the questions that this paper wrestles with. In particular, we are guided by Gould’s (2010) and Ahmed’s (2004) interpretations of affect that view it not as a result of individual brain biochemistry, but rather as the body’s ongoing inventory-taking of coming into contact with the world. In viewing affect as relational, it opens up possibilities for exploring what emotions can do and how they affect relations in the world.
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In this study, we explore this empirically through analyzing the stories of six Filipino transgender men and their affective experiences of embodying their transgender identity. In contrast to previous psychological research that pathologizes their emotions pre-transitioning and promises euphoria through transitioning and “passing” as cisgender, we find that their affective experiences are far more complex than these reductive binaries. We then conclude with how these affects allow transgender men to embody their authentic selves despite the regulatory forces within society, and how valuing affect allows space for a clinical practice that legitimizes different kinds of transgender becomings.
Exploring Narratives through a Rhizomatic Lens: Rhizomatic Stories as a Way of Seeing Life After Sexual Violence
Angelique Pearl Virtue
P. Villasanta, PhD
Department of Psychology​
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Narratives have been critiqued as imposing coherence or singularity where there could be none. In the field of psychology, this imposition could obscure experiences that do not fall within linear structures. This presentation describes the reconceptualization of narratives through the use of Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomatic lens, as a way to suspend assumptions of coherence and linearity. In doing so, this presentation proposes a rhizomatic narrative approach that creates space for exploring alternative narrative structures that could better capture the non-linear, dynamic, and multiple layers of experience. This presentation walks through the process of rhizomatic narrative conceptualization, data collection, analysis, and representation through mapping, as applied in a research about women’s experiences of healing and living after sexual violence – where healing has previously been understood in dominant literature through linear and stage-based models. As a way to illustrate the promise and value of rhizomatic narrative analysis, this presentation shares the results based on the rhizomatic narratives of eight Filipino women between the ages of 26 to 38, who have experienced forced, manipulated, or unwanted sexual activity without consent. The rhizomatic narratives were analyzed through the researcher’s engagement with the following processes: (a) honoring the stories, (b) exploring the rhizomatic narratives, (c) mapping the rhizomatic narratives, and (d) following lines of becoming. The analysis maps will be shared, along with researcher reflection and insights, and implications on narrative research.
Towards an Embodied Feminist Research Ethics in Psychology
Girl Research Group
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Anne Therese Marie B. Martin
University Gender Hub
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Juleini Vivien I. Nicdao
Monash University
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Gilana Kim T. Roxas
Department of Psychology
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Angelique Pearl Virtue P. Villasanta, PhD
Department of Psychology
Established ethics committees and institutional review boards continue to regulate qualitative research practices through the frameworks of individual harm minimization and rigid proceduralism. While these frameworks continue to be useful in providing general checklists for qualitative researchers in the social sciences to preemptively ensure the safety of participants, they provide minimal guidance on how researchers can deal with ethical issues as they arise in the actual doing of the research on an individual, local level, especially for sensitive and challenging topics such as sexual violence. In response, this presentation fleshes out an approach to qualitative research in psychology that practices an embodied and feminist ethics throughout the data collection and data analysis process, and in relating with each other as young female researchers accompanying participants with experiences of sexual violence. As young women doing research in psychology, we reflect on the questions: how do we “be with” women participants with experiences of sexual violence throughout the entire research process? As young women doing research in psychology, how do we “be with” each other? We present our process of doing “girl research” and how we navigated ethically important moments with women participants, with each other, and with disembodied (but felt and material) aspects of the academe as we write, think, and research together. At the same time, we also invite shared conversations about researcher-participant reflexivity and collaboration.