Imaginative Methods
While calls for the imagination abound, to date only few works exist that explore methodological approaches for how to activate a critical imagination. This stream is about fundamentally reimagining how research can help us think and not know with others. Combining elements of critical design with new materialist epistemologies and practice-based research we develop research practices to imagine with people to challenge assumptions and inspire alternative technological narratives.
Our focus is on working with students and researchers at the DDI, as well their international network of collaborators, to develop practices and tools for new and existing projects that place the imagination at the centre of method. The long-term goal of the stream is to expand the empirical toolkit to fully encounter research as a collective endeavour, while developing new ways of working and caring with the imagination as a means to better confront the many challenges we face today.
Working Group - Imaginative Methods: the radical and the critical in research
Led by Gillian Russell & Frédérik Lesage
(Sept 2022 – closed group, expressions of interest should be directed to gillianr@sfu.ca)
This working group is a fortnightly gathering of graduate students across various schools who are employing, or aim to employ, imaginative methods as a part of their research.
Recent scholarship in the social sciences, humanities, art and design has drawn attention to the politics of the imagination, arguing for the radical imagination as a key device for thinking and acting in times of crisis (Escobar, 2018; Haiven, 2014; Keeling, 2019; Khasnabish & Haiven, 2017). These scholars and practitioners define the radical imagination as a way to “reimagine the imagination”, and as a collective process that holds the potential to animate new ways of perceiving and thinking the world. By bringing together the radical and imagination, they suggest a methodological commitment to the transformation of reality. However, while calls for the imagination abound, to date there are few resources to help researchers incorporate this collective process into their own research practices.
This group sets out to explore, assess, and analyze various methodological approaches for animating the radical imagination through method. Together we will engage in critical reflections with conceptual and methodological frameworks, case studies, and hands on workshops to further our knowledge of how to weave together the imagination and method.
(including any researchers affiliated with the lab) in open-ended sessions that function as co-creation sessions to help researchers reflect on key concepts related to their investigations through modalities other than the written word and how insights gained from such reflections could apply to further developing theory and methodology.
Workshop Series: “The Way We See It”
These workshop sessions are designed to invite researchers to consider how imaginative methods can be incorporated into various stages of their ongoing research process. We invite researchers to collectively share and explore their research projects (including any researchers affiliated with the lab) in open-ended sessions that function as co-creation sessions to help researchers reflect on key concepts related to their investigations through modalities other than the written word and how insights gained from such reflections could apply to further developing theory and methodology.
People Involved
At SFU
An Assistant Professor of Design whose work investigates the unique cultural, ethical and critical challenges posed by digital technologies, focusing on ways to re-shape technology through value-based imagination.
An Associate Professor of Communication whose work investigates the complex intersections between cultural production and its digital mediation, which includes how design cultures contribute to the development of new materialist epistemologies.