Giovanni P. Dazzo

As a methodologist, Dr. Dazzo is committed to a research agenda focused on critical approaches to research, methodology, and policy studies. Based on his experience working across nonprofits, federal government, multilateral agencies, and academia, he is most interested in partnerships that ensure evidence is utilized in ways that learn from and benefit communities subjected to structural violence, racism, and abuse. His current research agenda includes (1) exploring transformative and restorative forms of inquiry, seeking to critically question overly technocratic practices that exacerbate deficit models, racialized narratives, and extractive forms of learning; (2) imagining new futures by working alongside communities to inform how policymakers interact and consider community-informed evidence, and methodology (i.e., how researchers can learn from communities to rethink how they conduct research); and (3) testing critical pedagogical practices, to formulate methodological lessons from those who use their experiential knowledge to advocate for societal change.

Dr. Dazzo’s current research includes partnerships in the U.S. and abroad, including: working with high school students to explore how racial and ethnic minoritization and criminalization impact their mental health, and their recommendations to counter this within schools; and collaborating with an Indigenous Maya community in Guatemala to explore how their knowledge systems can educate others on memorialization, justice, and restorative forms of inquiry (i.e., how research can heal, rather than simply prove a point).