The Creative Researcher
Mapping research culture through collage inquiry
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v12i3.1844Keywords:
collage inquiry, researcher development, research cultureAbstract
Research culture is often framed as an external and abstract construct, shaped by institutional environments. This article takes a different perspective, arguing that research culture is actively constituted within research practices. Drawing on findings from The Public Laundry Project, a study funded through the Enhancing Research Culture Fund (ERCF) at the University of Warwick (2023–24), this article examines how researchers experience and navigate the cultural dimensions of their work. Using collage inquiry, a creative research method employed in professional development workshops, the study explores how researchers articulate and reflect on their research problems and the broader conditions that shape them. This article aims to contribute to research culture scholarship in two ways. First, it reframes research culture as enmeshed with research practices and researcher identity. This challenges dominant conceptualisations of research culture as primarily institutional or extra-individual. I argue that sustainable shifts in research culture cannot be achieved solely through institutional regulation or external frameworks. Rather, they require an attentiveness to the ways in which culture is lived, enacted, and negotiated within the everyday practices and identities of researchers themselves. Second, the article advances methodological innovation by demonstrating how collage inquiry functions both as an outward-facing research method for examining research culture and as an inward-facing tool for fostering critical reflection. By documenting the workshop process, this article highlights the potential of arts-based methods to surface the lived experiences of researchers, support interdisciplinary dialogue, and cultivate research environments that embrace uncertainty as a generative force in knowledge production. In doing so, it offers new perspectives on how research culture might be actively shaped through creative, reflexive, and deliberative approaches.
Funding Acknowledgement
This research was supported by The Enhancing Research Culture Fund, at the University of Warwick (funded through the Enhancing Research Culture funding from Research England) in 2023-24.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Harriet Richmond
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