Community Development-Grounded and Led: A Methodological Approach for Ethical,Community-Driven Inquiry With Roma in Ireland

Abstract

This paper presents a community development-grounded and community-led research approach that explores Roma employment experiences in Ireland. The study used a research process rooted in the values of participation, collective analysis, and action for social justice, while centring Roma epistemologies and community accountability. The research was developed collaboratively by community workers and Roma researchers from Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre and Department of Applied Social Studies, Maynooth University. It used narrative, conversation-based interviews inspired by the Biographic Narrative Interpretive Method, which supported participant-led storytelling and oral traditions central to Roma culture. Ethics was guided by both university review and Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre’s internal Research Advisory Group. This paper explores five interrelated methodological dimensions: (1) grounding research in a community development process; (2) the composition and dynamics of a participatory research team; (3) Roma epistemologies; (4) community-led research governance, and (5) accountability to the community beyond the life of the project. The analysis and dissemination were co-produced, including co-authored and co-presented dissemination and public engagement. This paper adds to the growing field of community-driven research methods, demonstrating how research that is embedded in community development practice and guided by community development principles can move beyond extractive practices, contribute to epistemic justice, meaningful participation, and systemic change and by doing so can organically realise decolonising goals.

Keywords

community development participatory methods collaborative inquiry Roma

Introduction

Social science research on and with marginalised and minority ethnic groups in Ireland, specifically Irish Travellers¹ and Roma², has grown in both depth and methodological diversity over the past two decades. While this research differs in scope and depth, both groups have been the focus of research concerned with structural inequality, racism and health disparities with a particular focus on the social determinants of health, education, accommodation, social exclusion and access to social services (All-Ireland Traveller Health Study Team, 2010; Irwin, 2006; NASC, 2013; Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre & Department of Justice and Equality, 2018; Van Hout & Staniewicz, 2011). Critical analysis in policy, law and media also reveals persistent inequality (Crowley & Kitchin, 2007; Snowdon & Eklund Karlsson, 2021). Cihan Koca-Helvaci (2016) highlights the persistence of negative stereotypes in Irish media and Carron-Kee et al. (2024) illuminate the persistence of negative attitudes, deep seated bias and racism towards Traveller and Roma in Ireland (Carron-Kee et al., 2024).

Across disciplines, the research emphasis has shifted from only externally driven ethnographic or statistical documentation to include more participatory approaches. Researchers have increasingly acknowledged the ethical responsibility to centre the voices of marginalised communities in both research design and dissemination through research collaborations with advocacy organisations (All Ireland Traveller Health Study Team, 2010, Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre & Department of Justice and Equality, 2018; Bradley et al., 2023; Bradley & O’Dowd, 2023; Kavanagh, 2018; Villani & Barry, 2021; Ní Chorcora et al., 2024) and more recently to work in collaborative ways to build participation in research and develop community-led research. Local and national Traveller and Roma community development organisations have pioneered research where Travellers and Roma are actively involved in shaping the research process, from identifying research priorities to collaborating on the design, data collection, analysis, and dissemination (Bradley et al., 2023; Bradley & O’Dowd, 2023; Irwin, 2006; Kennedy et al., 2019; Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre & Department of Justice and Equality, 2018). The methodology used by these organisations includes qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches, with a particular emphasis on intersectionality ensuring that the diverse experiences of marginalisation are captured. Research is purposefully policy-driven, aiming not only to document inequality but to inform legislative and policy reform and hold institutions accountable as duty bearers. This work involves connecting and relating the local to the national and international.

Scholars from Traveller and Roma communities, long underrepresented in academia, are making important contributions across Ireland and Europe (for some examples see Joyce, 2018; Kóczé, 2017; McCann, 2023; McDonagh, 2019; McGinley, 2020).

Research with Roma across Europe is a multidisciplinary field focused on structural inequality, encompassing public health, education, policy analysis, and anti-racism and discrimination studies (Ioannoni et al., 2020). Similar to Ireland, a central concern in this growing literature is how to directly engage with Roma communities in research ensuring that approaches are ethical, appropriate and effective, rights-focused and respectful. Earlier research addressed wide-ranging inequalities in all aspects of life as well as bringing a human rights focus connecting to the broader histories of institutional neglect and racism (see Ioannoni et al., 2020; Orton et al., 2019; Orton et al., 2022; Parekh & Rose, 2011; Rutigliano, 2020; Watson & Downe, 2017; Zeman et al., 2003). More recently, community-based participatory research has grown (see Condon et al., 2019; Hubbard et al., 2023; Kirwan & Jacob, 2016; Marcu, 2017; Miranda et al., 2019; Miranda & Zhelyazkova, 2021; Mirnics & Kövi, 2024; Orton et al., 2019; Svobodová & Bobáková, 2021; Warwick-Booth et al., 2017) emphasising trust and long-term relationship-building as epistemic foundations. This approach recognises that knowledge is embedded in oral traditions, storytelling, and collective lived experiences, as well as, highlighting the challenges that emerge in research, such as unchecked power differences, tokenism, lack of recognition and authorship, and limited institutional funding cycles which impact the depth and sustainability of projects. Hubbard et al. (2023) caution that participatory rhetoric can be co-opted to serve institutional goals, masking rather than addressing, the underlying power imbalances that Roma communities face in both research and society.

Since the early 2000s, research across Europe, including Ireland, has consistently shown that Roma communities face systemic exclusion from employment due to racism, discrimination, and limited access to education, with particularly severe impacts on Roma women who are often confined to informal, insecure, and low-paid work without protections (ERRC, 2006; European Parliament, 2013; European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2014; Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre & Department of Justice and Equality, 2018; Preoteasa, 2013; UNDP, 2013). Efforts to improve employability have been inadequate, with studies showing that only a minority of Roma, especially women, are in paid employment and continue to face barriers such as spatial stigmatisation, workplace discrimination, poor educational attainment, and exclusion from unions (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2018, 2020 2025). Recent data from the ERGO Network (2024), the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (2025), and Ireland’s National Roma Needs Assessment (Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre & Department of Justice and Equality, 2018) confirm ongoing exclusion tied to deep-rooted systemic issues, with Roma still disproportionately represented in precarious jobs and extreme poverty, and underrepresented in policy structures that could help advocate for better conditions (ERGO Network, 2024, European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2025).

Concurrently, Yesudhas and Nikku (2025) argue that there has been a global shift in research towards participatory, community-engaged, and socially just approaches that challenge traditional top-down, positivist models by emphasizing co-creation, shared power, and accountability to local communities.

This paper reflects on a research project with the diverse Roma community in Ireland, including those with origins in Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland, which explored employment experiences. Building on the breadth of research described above, this project used a community development-grounded and led methodology. See Bradley et al. (2023) for further details on the findings. This paper offers a detailed account of how this research was operationalised and explores the ethical, political, and practical implications of this approach to research.

The Research: Community Development Grounded & Led

This paper presents research grounded in the practices of community development. ‘Community Development’or ‘Community work’ is a distinct values-led practice. It is grounded in human rights, dignity, participation, and, creating the conditions for collective action. It is a developmental activity comprised of both a task and a process. Practitioners work in, with, and alongside communities to achieve a more socially-just society in which human rights are realised and discrimination is addressed (AIEB, 2016; IACD, 2020). We are referring to this Irish tradition of radical community development practice (AIEB, 2016; McArdle, 2020). Community development/community work is framed by a structural analysis of the inequalities in society. Community work is practiced in a challenging context where inequality is endemic and as such require a challenging practice which questions injustice and works for change (Ife, 2016; Ledwith, 2020). It contains a vision for the potential of the practice and a potential for social change, thus taking a journey from the real towards the ideal, concerned with an analysis of social and economic situations and collective action for change based on that analysis (Crickley & McArdle, 2010). Research in the field of community development is a participatory, reflective, and politically engaged practice aimed at understanding complex social issues and empowering communities for social justice, with key contributions from McGarry et al. (2024a), Ledwith (2009), Mayo (2020), Ingamells et al. (2010), and Mayo et al. (2013).

The research is also community development-led, this means that it emerged from community development practice and is a task that part of the community development process. Community development work in Pavee Point Traveller and Roma centre centre with the Roma community has consistently brought employment-related challenges to the fore. The organisation identified and recognised the importance of exploring the experiences further, with the aim of identifying ways to enhance both access to and experience of work.

Our starting point was aligned with community development perspectives and critical research perspectives, which view research as inherently political, and, through its epistemology, methodology and application, potentially transformative (Bradley and Kavanagh, 2024a, 2024b; Hall, 2005; Hall & Tandon, 2017; Ledwith, 2009; Westoby & Dowling, 2013). This project was developed as a collaborative, community-based initiative informed by principles of community development as well as participatory action research and feminist participatory methodologies (AIEB, 2016; Freire, 2000) including a structural analysis of inequality, participation, empowerment, conscientization, collectivity, social justice, mutual learning, and collective inquiry (Fals-Borda, 1991; Kindon et al., 2007; Tandon, 1998). The approach was informed by a critique of research, consciously moving away from extractive methods towards power-sharing, participation, reciprocity, and action for human rights committed social change (Israel et al., 1998, 2012; McGarry et al., 2024a, 2024b; Reason & Bradbury, 2008; Wallerstein et al., 2018).

Ethics

Ethical approval was sought and obtained from both Maynooth University’s Social Research Ethics Committee and Pavee Point Traveller and Roma centre’s Research Advisory Group. The research team worked consciously and explicitly to develop an ethical practice throughout the research process. We approached this in two ways, firstly in how we worked together as a team and secondly, in how we worked with our research participants. Ethical relationality was a key concept in our engagement with each other and with the interviewees, a process that was continuously negotiated. We worked together to address power dynamics within the research team from the start. This involved creating a set of principles to work together. We discuss this in more depth later in this paper. We also considered what was needed to address potential power imbalances between researchers and participants. Informed participation and the right to refuse to participate were at the centre of this. We developed and used Roma-proofed consent forms in multiple national languages, ensuring that both language and information about the research was accessible to ensure informed consent. We also allocated time at the beginning of the interviews for explanation and discussion to ensure informed, voluntary participation. Active follow-up on participant needs and provision of information about community-based supports was also prioritised.

Research Design and Data Collection

A qualitative research design was developed using participant structured conversational interviews inspired by the ‘single question used to induce narrative’, the ‘SQUIN’, a key feature of the Biographic Narrative Interpretive Method (Wengraf, 2008) to create the conditions for the participants to lead the conversation and define what is important from their perspective. A shared learning space in the research team created opportunities for all the researchers to work together to develop knowledge and skills of the method, as well as, and how it might be used in a meaningful way with Roma.

The Roma researchers led 23 interviews with Roma women and men across Longford, Kildare, Wexford, and Dublin. They were also central in connecting with and recruiting participants. As the researchers were community workers working with Roma, they were in a strong position to reach out to participants through colleagues in the Roma network, a network of 20 organisations around Ireland whose shared goal is to improve the lives of Roma living in Ireland in 2018. The ability to speak multiple languages, including Romanes, also strengthened their ability to connect with participants and shape the tone, and flow of the interviews, building relationships through the process. Participants were invited to decide on the interview settings and the language used. Interviews were conducted in English, Czech, Slovak, Polish, and Romanian, then transcribed and translated into English. This approach built trust and facilitated deeper engagement, creating the conditions for Roma to safely share their experiences.

Eleven interviews were conducted with stakeholders, including policymakers and employment support workers and community workers working with Roma offering complementary structural perspectives on Roma experiences of seeking and participating in employment.

Regular debriefings and support mechanisms to ensure well-being and solidarity within the research team were important to mitigate potential harm and promote relational accountability in the research (Banks et al., 2013; Smith, 2012). The research took a flexible approach and adapted schedules where necessary to respond to competing issues in the broader work for the community worker researchers and the research participants.

Data Analysis

Design of the analysis stage was influenced by the community-based participatory research (CBPR) emphasis on participation, dialogue and reflection (Hall & Tandon, 2017; Strand et al., 2003) and feminist research methodologies such as the voice-centred relational method which emphasises multi-layered readings of transcripts to account for the individual narrative, relationality and the social structure reinforcing accountability and transparency in the process (Doucet & Mauthner, 2002). The interview transcripts were analysed thematically by the research team in a multi-layered, participatory process:

• Individual Reading and co-reading: Each researcher read and coded interview transcripts independently, identifying emergent themes.

• This was followed by dialogue and discussion between the community researchers first.

• This was followed by a collaborative team analysis. The full research team met to discuss the emerging themes, ensuring a space where diverse interpretations were acknowledged, reflected on, discussed, learned from and written up.

Writing

Shared writing was a feature of our approach throughout the project and included each of the team keeping their own notes and reflections throughout the process. For example, during the literature review phase, each of the team searched for and accessed research on the experience of Roma in accessing and participating in employment across Europe. The multiple languages and nationalities of the team facilitated a broad search beyond what is written in English. Each researcher took notes of important points and added these to a shared workspace. Similarly, during the analysis phase each researcher shared their notes.

The university researcher led in collating the materials from the various stages into a first draft of the research report. Each section was reviewed, revised, and later validated by the full team.

Research participants were invited to a feedback day where the findings were presented for discussion. The community organisations from the national Roma network that supported participation of the Roma participants also supported participants to travel to the feedback day by providing transport. Food was provided and a welcoming community space was created. The community researchers led the presentation. This was followed by open dialogue and discussion where participants were invited to respond, ask questions, clarify and share their views. All feedback was recorded through notes. Broadly the feedback from participants was positive regarding the interpretations but some comments warranted further thought. We took time together as a team to reflect on the feedback. We began by revisiting our interpretations and critically examining the assumptions, positionalities, and power dynamics that may have shaped our analysis. We revised or expanded our findings, when necessary, often incorporating multiple viewpoints to reflect the complexity of the issues.

Publication, Dissemination & Public Communication

The final report was produced in collaboration with a photographer and designer. Following the principles of our approach outlined above it was important that the report was accessible, and that the participants could see themselves and their stories represented and relatable. Roma symbols and images were used across the report. Quotes from the interviews were shared in the findings sections to illuminate the issues highlighted by the analysis. It was also important that the findings were accompanied by clear policy recommendations which could lead to tangible change. The research team and Pavee Point Traveller and Roma centre’s Research Advisory Committee reviewed the report and contributed to the final version.

The research report was publicly launched through a collaborative event hosted by Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre guided by the same principles that guided the research: co-ownership, visibility, and action. The launch brought together community members, Roma organisations and representative groups, community workers, policymakers, other civil society organisations. Key messages were communicated through accessible language to foreground the experiences of participants. Presentations from the research team, including Roma researchers, shared key findings on workplace discrimination, unsafe conditions, and limited access to supports for Roma in Ireland. The event provided an opportunity for the Roma researchers to speak directly about the research process, their role, the research significance, reinforcing the collaborative nature of the study and with the aim that the research informs both the public discourse and policy processes. The findings received wide attention through government departments and media engagement (Power, 2023; RTE News, 2023). The research team also had the opportunity to present to several key policy working groups on employment in the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the Department of Social Protection.

Discussion: Key Aspects of Community Development-Grounded and Led Research Ensures Community-Driven Research

This research aimed to explore Roma employment in Ireland through a methodological approach grounded in the principles and practices of community development and informed by approaches to participatory action research and feminist praxis. In doing so, it sought not only to generate empirical insights into Roma employment in Ireland but to advance a methodologically rigorous, ethically sound, and politically engaged approach to research with and for Roma communities.

Although this study did not begin with an explicit intention to decolonise research tasks, processes, or outputs, it achieved many of the outcomes associated with decolonising methodologies. This was not incidental. It was made possible by the use of community development as a philosophical foundation and a practical guide for decision-making, shaping how the research was conceived, conducted, and communicated. In doing so, the project disrupted conventional hierarchies of knowledge production and centred a research epistemology aligned with Roma epistemologies. This section reflects on five interrelated methodological dimensions: (1) research as community development practice; (2) the research team and working together; (3) an epistemology aligned with Roma epistemologies; (4) the governance and accountability mechanisms used; and (5) the contribution of the research to community development outcomes.

Research as Community Development Practice

Community development served not only as the context from which the research emerged, but the principles also guided the decision-making framework. This approach positioned the research as part of community development practice towards social justice, empowerment, and collective action (AIEB, 2016; McArdle, 2020; Westoby & Dowling, 2013). Methodological decisions, including the focus of the research at the outset, the approach to data collection, ethics, analysis, and dissemination, were shaped by the principles of participation, reciprocity, and structural analysis of inequality that resists deficit models. This reinforces Ledwith’s (2009, 2020) argument that community work is not merely a practice but a political method of inquiry.

The Research Team & Working Together

The composition and the evolution of the research team played a critical methodological role.

Guided by community development principles, one of the first steps was the recruitment of community researchers, recognising the value of analysis and the unique insights that members of the community bring to understanding issues from within their own communities. This was not novel as Pavee Point Traveller and Roma centre developed and pioneered this community-led approach to research over the past forty years ensuring the direct participation and involvement of Travellers and Roma, reflecting their commitment to the community development principle ‘nothing about us without us.’ It was important to ensure a gender balance and therefore a Roma woman and a Roma man were recruited as part of the team. The team also included a university researcher and a community worker, both with community development and research experience. This combined experience was crucial for the project. However, there is always a potential for power imbalances between academic researchers, community development workers, and community researchers. Each time we met, we used community development principles to guide our process. This mitigated power imbalance in this project. In other projects the community development worker may be crucial in navigating these dynamics.

Within our team, we engaged in reflective practice, a core concept in community development, to acknowledge and value the distinct contributions each member brought to the research. For example, the university-based researcher contributed methodological expertise and academic research experience, while the Roma community researchers offered deep knowledge of Roma culture, ways of knowing, lived experience, trusted relationships within the community, and insights into the historical and ongoing realities of discrimination. To kickstart this process we started one meeting by each making a list of the different experiences, knowledge and skills that we brought to the team. This developed the shared learning space and created confidence in each team member about what they had to offer to the project as well as what they would learn through the process.

This active reflexivity meant that we were all both owners of knowledge and learners. Thambinathan and Kinsella (2021) call this a ‘positionality shift’. This created a lived practice of ‘reciprocity’ and led to shared ownership of both the process and the product. Through this exercise those experienced in research took on new roles as learners about Roma culture, experience of racism and discrimination, the history of Roma in Europe, ongoing poverty and marginalisation. Roma workers developed knowledge and skill in research and in community development.

Roma experience is shaped by systemic marginalization and historic exclusion. Epistemologies include critical awareness of this context, making perspectives inherently political and situated, and often for these reasons identified as “hard to reach” in conventional research (Condon et al., 2019). Researchers who work with Roma argue that trust is a central epistemological condition for research (Condon et al., 2019; Hubbard et al., 2023). They argue that knowledge is deeply relational - trust between researchers and community members is what enables the sharing of lived experiences and perspectives. Hubbard et al. (2023) emphasise that long-standing community partnerships and the presence of trusted organisations and individuals working within the community (e.g. Roma support workers) were critical for engagement and knowledge-sharing. Condon et al. (2019) discuss the role of workers and the need to work within social networks that are respected within the community.

In this project, trust with the research participants was reached both through the reputation of the Traveller and Roma organisations and the work of the community researchers. Hubbard et al. (2023) argue participatory research is most effective when long-standing relationships are honoured and sustained. The emotional work undertaken by community researchers in this project - building rapport and trust, navigating challenging stories, carrying community expectations - was significant. The success of the project depended on this work. Following Banks et al. (2013) and Doucet and Mauthner (2002), we wish to foreground this labour as it is rarely recognised in formal research accounts. This reflects the decolonial concept of ‘ethical relationality’ within the team and with the research participants (Thambinathan & Kinsella, 2021; Butsang, 2022).

Alignment with Roma Epistemologies

Community development prioritises the importance of building relationships on a foundation of trust and working with people where they are, starting with their story (Westoby & Dowling, 2013). The conversational interviews used in this research, informed by the Biographic Narrative Interpretive Method (Wengraf, 2008), were deliberately designed to create space for participant-led narrative so as not to impose a system of relevance or a way of knowing on the interviews. This approach created the conditions for participants to define what mattered and how they wanted to speak about it. This approach is consistent with a growing body of CBPR literature working with Roma communities across Europe (Miranda & Zhelyazkova, 2021) Mirnics and Kövi (2024) argue that Roma knowledge emerges through collective negotiation, emphasising the importance of community validation, especially in contexts of historical mistrust toward formal institutions. The need to start with the ‘story’ of the participants (Westoby & Dowling, 2013) alerted us to the risk that gathering and analysing the information with the western epistemology dominant could silence or erase the ‘true’ experience of Roma. To mitigate this, carefully designed a multi-layered reading of transcripts followed by deep discussion in the team. This reflects Thambinathan and Kinsella’s concept of ‘epistemic diversity’ (Thambinathan & Kinsella, 2021) creating the conditions to collect stories in the terms of the participants and using the diverse knowledge brought by each research team member in the analysis phase.

Governance and Community Accountability

Decisions about the governance structure of the research were also directed by community development principles. Examples of this were manifold throughout the project, for example: a deliberate decision was made to share power over the knowledge production process and outputs, this meant ownership of the research/intellectual property rights were retained by the community organisation, rather than the academic institution - a deliberate choice. This aligns with Indigenous research governance frameworks such as OCAP in Canada and reflects commitments described by Doerksen et al. (2024) and Robson et al. (2017).

Another example was that ethics approval followed two distinct processes: formal university institutional review and review by the community organisation’s Research Advisory Group. This ensured accountability to both university ethics protocols and alignment with priorities and ethical concerns of the community. This aligns with commitments in decolonising literature for ethics to sit with the community, be contextual and relational (Banks et al., 2013; Bull et al., 2020; Smith, 2012).

A third example of this was the research timeline. Community development explicitly acknowledges that meaningful participation takes time. This project took over 18 months. This was enabled by flexible funding. This mirrors a participative and decolonial approach and contrasts starkly with time-constrained funding policies.

Community Development Outcomes

Crucially, the project also contributed to community development outcomes. The research generated nuanced insights into the experience of Roma in accessing and participating in employment. These informed the what, the how and the who of practice and policy work of Pavee Point Traveller and Roma centre. The researchers originally employed as community researchers expanded their skills in research and in community development and secured further employment as Roma workers and took up training in community development work in the organisation following the project. The Roma team in Pavee Point Traveller and Roma centre grew in strength and developed relationships with other organisations around the country. A key policy outcome was the commitment by the Government to develop and implement a Traveller and Roma Training, Employment and Enterprise Plan as part of the National Traveller and Roma Inclusion Strategy 2024-2028 (Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, 2024). These impacts - capacity building, development of leadership and strengthened community infrastructure - are consistent with Freire's (2000) and Ledwith's (2020) conception of research as a transformative act of praxis, where inquiry becomes an engine for conscientization and systemic change (McMahon et al., 2024). They challenge the colonial foundations of traditional research methodologies that have historically extracted knowledge from communities without reciprocity or ethical accountability (Smith, 2012). These outputs and outcomes challenge discriminatory narratives, and promote ethical, inclusive, policy responses that counter inequality and marginalisation.

Conclusion

This paper has presented a participatory, community development-grounded and led approach to researching Roma employment in Ireland, informed by feminist, critical, and relational methodologies. The study was guided by the core values of community work, participation, collective analysis and collective action for social justice, and it was developed in partnership with Roma researchers and community workers. Rather than research as an academic activity, we practiced it as an extension of community development practice, embedded in ongoing relationships and the collective struggle for rights and recognition. The approach took a conscious departure from extractive models, seeking to reconfigure who defines the research agenda, how knowledge is produced, and for what ends it is used.

Although this study was not initially designed through a decolonial framework, its values and practices resonate deeply with decolonising principles. This research arrived at decolonising practice through its community-led commitments and its reflexive, relational methodology guided by community development principles. It demonstrates how grounded, values-led research in community development can organically realise decolonising goals.

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Ciara Bradley

Jenny Liston

Vanessa Paszkowska

Rudolf Simonic

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research was funded by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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