{"id":292,"date":"2026-02-11T09:37:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T09:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MAOT\/?p=292"},"modified":"2026-02-11T09:37:45","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T09:37:45","slug":"two-more-vibrant-sessions-for-the-maot-community-of-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MAOT\/index.php\/2026\/02\/11\/two-more-vibrant-sessions-for-the-maot-community-of-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"Two more vibrant sessions for the MAOT Community of Practice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve been fortunate to have two great sessions for the MAOT CoP in recent weeks.<\/p>\n<p>On January 28th <strong>Koula Charitonos<\/strong> presented on &#8216;<strong>Participatory research with refugee and displaced communities: \u2018moving up and down the ladder of co-creation<\/strong>\u2019 and yesterday we had <strong>Rob Farrow<\/strong> and <strong>Fereshte Goshtasbpour<\/strong> speaking on &#8216;<strong>Charting the Passage: Navigating the Transition from Master\u2019s Study to Doctoral Research<\/strong>&#8216; with a contribution from MAODE alumnus <strong>Sarah Alcock<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_293\" style=\"width: 210px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-293\" class=\"wp-image-293 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MAOT\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/5f4c457a07cf293d0fc22bc9ec8594b1-c.png\" alt=\"Koula Charitonos\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-293\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Koula Charitonos<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>Koula<\/strong> spoke about her work in Uganda and Jordan, and navigating the ethical dimensions of co-creation in sensitive topic areas. She discussed the practical issues around training and workshops (language, timing, payment) and the value of allowing participants a real voice (in this case using the local radio station to help create audio narratives by some of the participants).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_294\" style=\"width: 210px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-294\" class=\"wp-image-294\" src=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MAOT\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/75d9b6026283413655b5a7a786bfff9b-c.png\" alt=\"Rob Farrow\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-294\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rob Farrow<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_295\" style=\"width: 210px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-295\" class=\"wp-image-295\" src=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MAOT\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/0178ee7eebc31f4e6d328c682ae535c8-c.png\" alt=\"Fereshte Goshtasbpour\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-295\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fereshte Goshtasbpour<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>Rob and Fereshte<\/strong> highlighted the core elements of meeting the application and interview requirements for a doctoral position and how to write a good application, as well as looking at potential pathways for our own MAOT students towards doctoral study. <strong>Sarah<\/strong> provided a &#8216;student voice&#8217; as someone who has recently trod that very pathway!<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_296\" style=\"width: 210px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-296\" class=\"wp-image-296\" src=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MAOT\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/b6il_lhx_400x400.jpg\" alt=\"Sarah Alcock\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-296\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sarah Alcock<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The recordings of both sessions are available via the MAOT Community of Practice website on Slack. To join (if you are a student or alumnus of any elements of the MAOT or MAODE) contact Simon Ball at the Open University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve been fortunate to have two great sessions for the MAOT CoP in recent weeks. On January 28th Koula Charitonos presented on &#8216;Participatory research with refugee and displaced communities: \u2018moving up and down the ladder of co-creation\u2019 and yesterday we had Rob Farrow and Fereshte Goshtasbpour speaking on &#8216;Charting the Passage: Navigating the Transition from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,13,5,11,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-of-practice","category-educational-futures","category-maot","category-research","category-success-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MAOT\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MAOT\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MAOT\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MAOT\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MAOT\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MAOT\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":298,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MAOT\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions\/298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MAOT\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MAOT\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MAOT\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}