Creative Methods Experimentation #2: Research-Creation, Propositions, and Transdisciplinary Failures

This is part of a series of three standalone online sessions, scheduled for Thursday 12th February, Thursday 5th March and Thursday 26th March 2026.

This series of three sessions offers postgraduate researchers the opportunity to engage with leading experts who are pushing the boundaries of qualitative inquiry through creativity, innovation, and collaboration. The sessions explore how researchers are extending and reworking traditional qualitative methods, experimenting with creative methods, arts-based and research-creation practices, and developing approaches to co-production that open up new forms of knowledge and participation.

Each lecture will be structured around one or two key readings, providing a shared foundation for discussion. Participants will not only have the chance to reflect critically on the ideas and techniques presented, but will also be encouraged to experiment with selected methods in practice, testing their potential within their own areas of research. Together, the series aims to cultivate methodological versatility by combining theoretical reflection, practical experimentation, and collective dialogue.

The second session in the series will host Dr David Shannon, Lecturer in Education at the University of Sheffield. The session will introduce students to the practice of research-creation. Research-creation names a transdisciplinary approach to research that combines artistic practice with theory and empirical methods. In the reading, David explores how the failure inherent to transdisciplinary work can interrupt powerful narratives about marginalised communities, but also comes with challenges for the researcher (particularly where that researcher is a student). In the workshop, students will learn about how to craft research-creation events using Whitehead’s propositions. David will share some of his own PhD work using sound methods to illustrate how propositions might work in practice. Following this, students will have an opportunity to develop their own propositions and think about how they might work in their own research projects.

The key reading for this session is:

• Shannon, D. B. (2022). Perversity, precarity, and anxiety: tracing a ‘more precise typology’ of the affect of neuroqueer failure in an in-school research-creation project. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 37(3), 676–690.
• Springgay, S. (2020). The fecundity of poo: Working with children as pedagogies of refusal. In B. Dernikos, N. Lesko, S. McCall, & A. Niccolini (Eds.), Mapping the affective turn in education (pp. 148–163). Routledge.

Outcomes

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Use research-creation as a way of structuring participatory, transdisciplinary research events;
• Use Whitehead’s concept of the proposition as a way of planning and developing arts-based research projects;
• Use sound methods in ethical, participatory ways.
  

Contributors

Dr David Shannon is an interdisciplinary scholar, whose research intersects with critical disability studies, early childhood education, cultural studies, and art. Methodologically, he works with sensory ethnography, sound, research-creation, and digital ethnography. He is also a sound artist and a composer.

Dr Laura Trafi-Prats is a Reader in the School of Education at Manchester Metropolitan University, and Deputy Director of Advanced Qualitative Methods for the WRDTP.