[Commlist] Call for contributions: ‘Mess and Resilience in Creative Research Methods’

‘Mess and Resilience in Creative Research Methods’

Friday 26^th  June, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton,

Call for contributions

Discussing Methods, John Law (2004) argued for a remaking of research 
methods, divesting it of its ‘inheritance of hygiene’. He also noted 
that research methods are a guide that can help the researcher reach a 
destination with reasonably secure findings. While researchers who draw 
on creative research methods have moved away from the linear, single set 
of processes in their methodology, the messy, iterative and sometimes 
precarious dimension of the work is often absent from published outputs. 
The ‘reincarnated methodology’ in creative research methods, according 
to Law, ‘can be slow and uncertain…a risky and troubling process’. Yet, 
researchers are routinely required to narrate the process as coherent 
and purposive, even when the reality is far more complex, to ‘hold them 
steady for a moment against a background of flux and indeterminacy’.

Foregrounding mess as methodologically significant, this symposium 
creates a dedicated space to examine and interrogate moments in the 
research process when things do not go as planned.  How can mess, 
resilience, and the unresolved aspects that arise in the application of 
creative research methods be epistemologically meaningful? We invite 
researchers across disciplines to share their experiences, challenges, 
victories, as well as the unresolved aspects of their research projects 
that rarely appear in finished work. Debates about mess as method abound 
in the social sciences, anthropology, performance studies, and 
practice-led research. How might researchers in these fields view mess, 
resilience and the unresolved as legitimate sources of knowledge practices?

We welcome submissions from PGRs, early-career researchers, and 
independent scholars working with creative research methods. 
Contributions may take the form of:

Short (15-minute) presentations

Creative Presentations / Practice Demonstrations and

Posters

Possible themes under the clusters of mess, resilience, uncertainty and 
the unresolved in creative research methods include:

*Mess as Method*

How mess is managed, narrated, or suppressed in academic writing and 
publication

The politics of 'tidying up' research processes for external audiences

Mess across disciplines

Decolonising methodology and the politics of whose mess counts

Methodological improvisation and the value of the unplanned

Institutional and structural constraints on methodological messiness 
(ethics committees, funding bodies, and the demand for clarity)

*Resilience and uncertainty*

Emotional dimensions of creative research

Navigating methodological uncertainty in creative research

Recovering and rebuilding after research setbacks or creative blocks

The role of community and collaboration in sustaining creative research

Resilience across intersecting identities in creative research contexts

Ethical dimensions of uncertain research outcomes

*Unresolved aspects of research*

Dead ends, detours, and what they leave behind

Dealing with productive failure (when things not working produces insight)

The language of uncertainty and the unresolved aspects of research (how 
researchers talk and write about what they do not yet know and what is 
unresolved)

Publishing and disseminating unresolved or inconclusive research

Unfinished creative works as legitimate research outputs

Revisiting old research, abandoned projects and incomplete work

The event is free with refreshments provided. The event is also 
primarily intended as an in-person conference, but the organisers do 
have some programme capacity for online presentations.

To apply, please complete this short form 
<https://forms.gle/twEDzHXnZJybSsnM8> by 5 pm on 18^th  May



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