The Tattoo Project: Commemorative Tattoos, Visual Culture, and the Digital Archive is a multidisciplinary, methods-based text edited by Deborah Davidson and published by Canadian Scholars’ Press. Davidson is an Associate Professor of Sociology at York University who specializes in qualitative research of bereavement and commemoration. Her work on both this text and its digital counterpart at thetattooproject.info reflects a commitment to three key principles. First, both she and several other contributors situate themselves in the scholarship they present, thereby acknowledging the co-creative agency of self and subject. Second, the text and archive are collaborative endeavors involving academics of many backgrounds, tattoo artists, tattooed persons, and others whose diverse perspectives result in a multifaceted and egalitarian exploration of the topic. Third, the concurrent production of both a text and digital archive encourages what contributor Krista Jensen identifies as knowledge mobilization, which “gets research out of academic journals, out of the ivory tower, and into the hands of people” (191).
MacCath-Moran, Ceallaigh. “Review of The Tattoo Project: Commemorative Tattoos, Visual Culture, and the Digital Archive Edited by Deborah Davidson.” Ethnologies 37, no. 2 (2017): 212–214.