This chapter presents a practical research design to learn about young people's experiences of political violence and transition. The Dynamic Story-Telling by Youth (DSTY) research workshop involves young people aged 12 to 27 across four countries resulting from the recent wars to learn about how they interact with the circumstances where they find themselves. Before discussing this theory-based research design, I present vignettes based on fieldnotes, project archives, and reports to offer insights about the workshop settings. These vignettes focus on the workshops, which occurred in the context of community participation, like that pictured in Figure 2.1 and as appropriate to urban as well as rural settings.

SERBIA, AUGUST

It's a Saturday in August when 31 young people could have been picnicking near the river, sitting with their friends at a café, or helping out at home. Instead, these young people came looking curious, if not enthusiastic, to former government buildings to participate in a workshop eliciting youth voices and to communicate with other youth across the region. Recruited through an NGO active since the war in positive social change, the youth gathered in now-underused buildings in what was the capital of Yugoslavia when the participants were young children. The research workshop is led in their language by a young Serbian man now studying for a Ph.D. in the United States and a local educator, with assistance from two other young adults living in Belgrade.