Dr. Otruba brings Photovoice exhibit to Virginia Tech

Publication Date: October 27, 2023

Dr. Ariel Otruba, feminist political geographer and faculty member at Arcadia University in Glenside PA, visited Blacksburg in early October to open a traveling photographic exhibition, “Violent Infrastructure: Ecologies of Decay and Displacement” at Newman Library that features thirty photos taken by ten internally displaced persons from the Republic of Georgia. The exhibit is currently on display through mid-December 2023.

The Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance (VTIPG), Center for European Union, Transatlantic, and Trans-European Space Studies (CEUTSS), the Center for Refugee, Migrant, and Displacement Studies (CRMDS), and VTIPG’s student-affiliated organization, the Community Change Collaborative, hosted her visit.

Otruba had long been interested in the Republic of Georgia, having completed a short-term study abroad program in that country in 2011. That experience sensitized her to the many conflicts in that region. Accordingly, when she undertook her PhD at Rutgers University a few years later, her dissertation focused on administrative boundaries and borderlands in the area and how those constructs affected relations among local populations.  For this research she decided to pursue a project utilizing photographs, via a methodology called Photovoice, to allow those displaced by one of the area’s conflicts (the civil war in Georgia in 1991-1992) to record its many effects.

Otruba was able to obtain funding for her inquiry from the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus, an organization that supports scholars working in Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. She and her team of researchers from Georgia selected ten individuals who had been displaced since that nation’s civil war to take photographs of their living conditions beginning in the summer of 2021 and finishing the following summer. 

Otruba thought it was important to include Georgians as integral members of her research group: “I’m interested in ways in which I can ‘decolonize’ my work and make it a partnership with local people, rather than a western top-down extraction of knowledge,” she said.  

She developed a brochure to advertise the exhibition, which she shared with a colleague, an alumnus of the Planning, Governance, and Globalization (PGG) PhD Program in the School of Public and International Affairs, Dr. Nereg Seferian. Seferian connected Otruba with VTIPG Director Max Stephenson, Jr. in July, who was immediately interested in bringing the exhibit to Virginia Tech. He and Otruba worked with CEUTSS and CRMDS Directors Yannis Stivachtis and Katrina Powell and Newman Library curator Scott Fralin to plan the VT display. 

During her visit to campus to open the exhibit, Otruba offered a lecture, conducted a workshop on Photovoice for interested faculty and graduate students, sat for an interview for IPG’s Trustees without Borders podcast series, and met with various university officials, undergraduate, and graduate students.

Virginia Tech certainly left an impression on Otruba:

“This was an incredibly rich and exciting experience for me,” Otruba said. “The folks I met with inspired me to think bigger about my project and future possibilities.”

Otruba in turn left a mark on several of the students she met:

“Dr. Otruba’s intellect, passion, and dedication were not just inspiring, but truly transformative,” Marcel Pambo, a PGG student said. She reminded me that education is not just about learning facts, but about igniting minds and making connections."

"I really appreciated Dr. Otruba’s insightfulness into how to do qualitative research and how, even as an expert, she is still learning and thinking of ways to engage better with the topics at hand,” Brad Stephens, PGG student said. I truly hope to be as courageous, compassionate, and considerate in my own work."

As for next steps, Otruba, Stephenson and several other scholars from VTIPG, CEUTTS, and CRMDS will work on a co-edited book to serve as a companion to the exhibition. The volume will be published in both English and Georgian so that all interested may readily access it.

IPG Director Max Stephenson Jr. is looking forward to continuing to work with Otruba on the book and related research. As he noted, “Dr. Otruba’s work is thoughtfully framed, poignant and deeply revelatory. Her research provides insights into the challenges confronting refugees and internally displaced people throughout the world. I look forward to learning more with her about these populations and ways that governments and international organizations can better assist them.”