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Editorial

Susan M. Brigham and Renée McKinstry

Creative Entanglements: Riffing With Posthuman Arts-Based Inquiry

Richard Wainwright and Shannon Stevens
This paper looks into evolving practices in arts-based research (ABR) through the lens of Posthuman Arts-Based Inquiry (PABI) and its principle of experimental recombinatoriality, referred to here as “riffology”. By pushing back on anthropocentric assumptions, PABI brings in human and nonhuman forces alike, generating a more expansive approach to creativity and knowledge production. Drawing on DeleuzoGuattarian philosophy, new materialist perspectives, and post-qualitative research, we treat artmaking as an ontological event rather than mere representation. In doing so, PABI challenges established boundaries within ABR, foregrounding shared agency and ethical obligations that extend across human, technological, and ecological domains. Through practical examples and theoretical grounding, this paper demonstrates how PABI reimagines creative inquiry amid planetary crises, ultimately offering a posthuman critical pedagogy with the potential to transform both educational and societal landscapes.

An Embroidered Cartography: Using Phenomenologically Art-Led Methods to Explore the Futures Sense of Memory for Tertiary Career Education

Marguerite Westacott
Drawing from the fields of career education, futures studies, and visual art, this article is an interdisciplinary pilgrimage through scholarly and creative qualitative methods of research. It conveys the intersections of heuristic inquiry (as landmarks), autoethnography (the personal as universal) and phenomenologically art-led process (as interlocutor with subconscious and embodied knowing). The article shares the author’s exploration of the conceptual notion of the futures sense of memory—one of five cultural senses that underpin an innate anticipatory relationship with the future. Emergent data from art-led process is discussed with relevance to implications on practice in career education in tertiary pedagogy and curriculum.

The Romanian Traditional Shirt Ia: Agency, Complexity, and Thing-Power in an Immigrant Teacher Identity Journey

Mihaela Enache
Through critical collaborative autoethnography with arts-based methods, I experienced the embodied making of a Romanian traditional shirt called ia, as a practical exploration of my immigrant teacher identity. Ia changed my world; she became an intrinsic part of my identity and the core of my study. She deserved attention and representation because she was a presence. I thus responded to a provocation: not only did I understand the object/subject/agent of my study differently, but I became different myself and transformed my relationships with humans and nonhumans. Ia changed from an object into a subject and a participant; she became a storyteller and my teacher. Through complexity, thing-power, and agency, ia generated an extensive theoretical framework and enabled juxtapositions of concepts from Romanian village metaphysics, new materialism, and quantum entanglements.

Analogising Art Practice as Gameplay: A Dialogic Integration of Videogames as a Pluralistic Approach to Painting

Harrison W. See
While video games are undeniably informed by the cultural and artistic traditions that precede them, this article outlines how video games can inform contemporary painting by discussing how a practice-led integration of video games that analogises art practice as gameplay can facilitate a pluralistic approach to storytelling. The story explored here was informed by my reflections on prior encounters of cross-cultural collaboration as informed by a dialogic approach to difference. Further, through a dialogic perspective that challenges oppositional thinking, the material and digital are positioned together at an intersection explored through painting-led dialogue. The article explores how integration and intersection are effective sources of creativity and a practical approach to challenging a practitioner’s familiar ways of thinking and making. I aim to encourage other practitioners to critically reflect on their influences to explore their own unique integrations.

Faggot Speaks Again: Collage-Based Interpretive Phenomenological Inquiry Into the Poetics of Homophobia

Sil Machado
This single case study explores the lived experience of homophobia. Expanding upon a previously published poetic inquiry, the author analyzes six autobiographical poems—each describing personal and vicarious encounters with homophobia—as data. Using an interpretive phenomenological analysis, the author identifies five interrelated themes that suggest that homophobia is: (a) an embodied and interpersonal experience; (b) an experience of being diminished by others' beliefs; (c) an experience of danger and threat; (d) an experience of disconnection and alienation; and (e) a disorienting experience accompanied by attempts to understand what feels senseless. The author then represents each theme visually with hand-crafted collages, which offer symbolic and evocative amplifications of the emotional, intrapersonal, and interpersonal elements of each theme. The findings convey a multimodal, embodied, affectively resonant sense of the experience of homophobia, while demonstrating the emancipatory potential arts-based methodologies offer to raise queer voices and foster healing, knowledge, and change.

"Ain’t Got No Dream": Song Knowledge Mobilization for Queer Compassion Research

Phillip Joy and Stephen Fewer
"Ain’t Got No Dream" is a 3-minute song that incorporates findings from the Transformative Compassion project as a means of knowledge mobilization. The project explored the meanings of compassion for 2S/LGBTQ+ Canadians through semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed through Foucauldian discourse analysis. Overall, findings suggest that compassion can open new possibilities for 2S/LGBTQ+ individuals within cis-heteronormative contexts. The song is inspired by the storytelling music of Dolly Parton and depicts the isolation and stigma that still exists for many people outside of the binary orientations of gender and sexuality.

Staging Inquiry: How Broadway Musicals Model Qualitative and Arts-Based Research Methodologies

Craig M. McGill
This article explores how three musicals model rich sites of qualitative and arts-based research. Drawing on A Chorus Line, Tick, Tick… Boom!, and A Strange Loop, I analyze how each musical enacts distinct methodological approaches—including ensemble-based narrative inquiry, autoethnography, and performative ethnodrama. Grounded in a conceptual framework informed by arts-based research and Fenton’s (2021) ethnomusical libretto, the analysis draws on narrative truth (lived experience as knowledge), embodied knowledge (performance, voice, and movement as data), and recursive structure (looped, self-reflexive meaning-making) to examine how musicals produce and represent understanding through aesthetic form. The article includes a reflexive interlude, situating the researcher as both audience member and analyst, demonstrating how disciplinary lenses shape engagement with performance. Ultimately, I argue that musical theatre functions not merely as an object of study, but as a model for a methodological form of inquiry and research dissemination, one that challenges conventional boundaries of method, voice, and representation while extending arts-based research into public, affective, and performative spaces.

From Theory to Performance: Engaging With Foucault Through Arts-Based Research

Ajit P. Bhattarai
In this article, I discuss how arts-based research (ABR) and the concept of "writing as inquiry" were used to engage with some of Michel Foucault’s ideas. As a non-traditional student returning to academia after a professional break, I initially struggled with traditional methods of reading and analyzing theoretical texts. Therefore, I turned to ABR to engage with Foucault’s work and was able to successfully engage with it. This manuscript focuses on a play that uses dialogue to explore concepts such as postmodernism, metanarratives, and Foucault’s theories in an accessible manner. Grounded in the principles of ABR, the play highlights the potential ways artistic representation can serve as both a method of inquiry and a tool for making theoretical ideas more relatable. The article demonstrates that ABR can provide an effective means of exploring theory, especially for non-traditional students, facilitating engagement and reflection.

“Our Mothers’ Arms”: Ethnodrama of Motherhood Reimagined as Post-Colonial Resistance

Colleen H. Clements and Nimo Abdi
We use collaborative ethnography and ethnodrama to explore our experiences as mothers: a Somali-born Black mother, and U.S.-born white (working-class) mother. We contend that motherhood is a pivotal experience that politicizes those who experience it in significant ways. We seek to reveal the demands of the system of racial capitalism that exploits the labor of women to avoid providing an adequate safety net for its citizens (Calarco, 2024). This demand falls most heavily on mothers of color, immigrant mothers, and working-class mothers. Being activated to political engagement, however, can be towards liberatory ends or in the service of maintaining the violence of the status quo. In this work, we offer an example of finding solidarity within difference for liberatory purposes, intentionally acting against the more oppressive impulse to “protect our own.” We offer these stories to honor the intergenerational wisdom and strength found in “our mothers’ arms.”

Walk Through the Door: Storying the Experiences of Older Adults Living in Supportive Shelter Through Research-Based Theatre

Ana C. Herrera, Christine A. Walsh and Alison Grittner
Traditional forms of research highlight the informational content of data collection, largely disregarding affective and embodied aspects of participants’ experiences. Incorporating research-based theatre (RbT) into an inquiry process can bring participants’ voices to the forefront and may thereby enrich the study findings. By integrating a theatrical approach for observation, analysis, and knowledge dissemination, RbT can illuminate dramatic aspects of participants’ testimonies, providing key insights into addressing complex social issues. A theatrical analysis of the Aging in the Right Place (AIRP) research project data were used to explore participants’ affective experiences. The AIRP study elicited the perspectives of 35 older adults, age 55+, on the socio-spatial needs for aging in place in four temporary supportive shelters in Calgary, Alberta. This article discusses the process and findings of writing a theatrical piece drawing upon qualitative in-depth interviews and photovoice methods, aiming to more fully understand the socio-emotional aspects of older adults living in temporary supportive shelters.

Integrating the Arts in Socially Accountable Health Professional Education With a Case Study at James Cook University

Pauline Sameshima, Torres Woolley, Robyn Preston, Erin Cameron, Hoi F. Cheu, Jill Allison and Amy Clithero-Eridon
This research examines how Socially Accountable Health Professional Education (SAHPE) fosters transformative learning and professional identity formation, focusing on the multi-site Stories and Art of Local Transformation in Health Education project. SAHPE aligns education, research, and service with the needs of underserved communities. Using arts integrated methods and the parallaxic praxis framework, the project engaged students and faculty in creative workshops and reflective dialogue about social accountability. Case study findings from James Cook University show that a socially accountable curriculum—enhanced by diverse recruitment, rural placements, and faculty role modelling—supports equity-oriented values and advocacy skills. The arts enabled participants to express complex experiences, deepening compassion, and critical reflection. Explicit arts integrated SAHPE approaches may prepare future health professionals to address health disparities and promote universal health care.

A Cartography of Creativity, Labor, and Identity in Contemporary Higher Education: Review of Patricia Leavy’s (2025) The Artist Academic

Jessica Smartt Gullion
The Artist Academic is a foundational blueprint for scholars seeking to maintain intellectual freedom and methodological rigor in an area of shifting academic legitimacy. In this review, I discuss the intersection of creative practice, academic labor, and institutional identity in Patricia Leavy’s (2025) The Artist Academic. The book is a critical autoethnography of the artist/academic duality and offers a transparent account of Leavy’s transition from professor to independent scholar. I analyze Leavy’s major contributions across three domains: the negotiation of identity within a corporatized university, her demystification of the publication landscape, and the function of the memoir as a meta-commentary on arts-based research. I also highlight Leavy’s critique of gender scrutiny and the institutional suspicion towards non-traditional research outlets.

A Review of Amelia Walker, Helen Grimmett, and Alison L. Black’s, Ludic Inquiries Into Power and Pedagogy in Higher Education: How Games Play Us

Sharon McDonough
This narrative offering, interwoven with poetry, is my response to Walker, Grimmett, and Black’s (2024) edited volume Ludic Inquiries into Power and Pedagogy in Higher Education: How Games Play Us. In sharing this, I illustrate the way that I engaged with the book as a reader, how it resonated with me, and how it prompted me to think about my work in higher education and the nature of finite and infinite games, rules, and play. Throughout the review, I use “notes to self” in my narrative to highlight moments that connect with ideas in the book, as well as self-authored poetry, generated in response to concepts explored in the book. I also use the editors’ first names as a deliberate move to foster connection and conversation.

Review of Marcy Meyer’s Iconographic Research Poetry

Sarah Penwarden
In her recently published book, Iconographic Research Poetry, American researcher Marcy Meyer (2024) showcases the resonant power of metaphor by creating research poetry in/with concrete images: a tree, a juggler, a rollercoaster, a crow, a gourd. Meyer’s work shows the way in which shaped lines can echo the poem’s theme, to concentrate poetry’s power. Her work is characterised by a boldness in writing from emergence, from scenes and moments, from the way in which indigo ravens watched as she rode her bike home. Her work shows how to write ekphrasis poetry in response to epiphanies within the ordinary. She also depicts poetic writing as a collaborative conversation, in being able to offer back the poems to the maker of the object which inspired them. In this review, I also offer back some of Meyer’s own words in three found poems. Meyer’s work provides an accessible door into research poetry. It may encourage other researchers, educators, novices, and students to find their way there.