• Name: Yurim Jang
• Affiliation: Maastricht University

Procedural starting point

The way I described my methods or process in my last funding application was: For my research proposal and ethical application, I described my #methodology, what kind of #methods and how they would be used, and how these methods would help to answer the research questions. As I was going to employ three different methods - #interviews, #participant #observation and participants' #creating #photo_diaries -, I tried to explain in a way that makes it convincing why the three methods are necessary and how they would be implemented step by step.

What I actually did was / what I usually do is: Now being in the middle of fieldwork, I think while all these methods I am using are being conducted one by one practically, participants' making their photo diaries and participant observation are being conducted not necessarily as #procedures, but rather as #flexibly #depending on participants' situations and their level of involvement in research. Also, data collected from each method needs to be #connected as a whole, but this process couldn't be expected until before actual data began to be collected.

My previous experience between 'academic' and 'artistic' work:

As a student long time ago, I made short movies and documentaries with my friends, studied media & broadcasting first and then did my first master in cultural policy & management. And for my first career path, I worked as an art administrator/coordinator in the cultural sector like a film production company, a film festival and an art foundation.

• Name: Francesca Ranalli
• Affiliation: Postdoc - Dynamics of Youth, Utrecht University

Procedural starting point

The way I described my methods or process in my last funding application was: In the last funding application, I described the #methods I conduct in my #action-based research as #creative methods and the methods I study as #visual_art methods. Specifically, my methods are various formats of #walk-along #group_discussions, including walking through the #senses, and visual art methods, such as #drawing, #modelling, #mapping, and #co-designing.

What I actually did was / what I usually do is: It is an #accurate description of my methods, even though it does not include all the range of methods I use and #adapt to the target group at hand. However, I am now completing a systematic review of the literature to strengthen my knowledge on the use of those methods, including combination with other qualitative methods and data analysis. This is because in #interdisciplinary contexts, those methods are not always intended as I address them. Specifically, the main goal and #ability of using creative methods in my research is to #connect different age groups, including children, adults and the elderly, while also connecting #research and #practice. To #explain the need to use those methods, I address how those methods are able to include different #skills of participants, such as intergenerational and vulnerable communities, policymakers and professionals.

My previous experience between 'academic' and 'artistic' work:

It all started with art projects with children with an artist from New York. Our work has been a shared process since then. I believe it symbolises how approaches that are #different and #similar at the same time can learn by embracing reality and observing with fresh eyes their surroundings. I found academic and artistic work connected and more similar processes than we tend to assume. The whole #process of developing an idea from the surroundings belongs to both academic and artistic work. Even though academic practices tend to aim to be rigorous, it is still subject to the researcher as the artwork is to the artist, while also both needing #communities to make meanings out of them. To go back to my roots and experience, I worked as an architect for 9 years before moving to research in the last 9 years: I am in the middle of this experience, and I aim to connect research and practice more and more. In the last 9 years of research, my work has been embedded with art-based methodologies to engage with different age groups in cities in ways that are meaningful to them and align with participants’ different ways of communicating. I mainly adopted design, drawings, modelling, walking, and art exhibitions as a process to share different perspectives among participants and create new meanings and understanding throughout the process.

• Name: Henriëtte Waal
• Affiliation: Artist

Procedural starting point

The way I described my methods or process in my last funding application was: Ecosocial #mapping, a #practice-based approach combining material #ethnography, field #recordings, #testimonies of local knowledge holders, #fundamental science, #performative #action-research, and #prototyping. #Co-creation sessions with multi-species #builders, #designers and #activists explore alternative value frameworks beyond carbon accounting, rooting material applications—such as fish habitats—in ecological logics. Wetland plants are #repositioned not merely as a bio-based commodity but as a relational material linking soil, water, craft, community, and industry.

What I actually did was / what I usually do is: I left out #desk research, testing (trial and error that comes with the prototyping) and #educational_settings which I use to disseminate and collectively develop knowledge around the topics I work on.

My previous experience between 'academic' and 'artistic' work:

At Atelier Luma, I worked from initial field research to vision development, and from boundary work in innovation/science studies, from existing factory/infrastructure assessment to establishing the Atelier Luma laboratory — initiating and supervising collaborations between designers, farmers, craftspeople, industry, policymakers and scientists in embodied dialogue with the Camargue wetland ecologies. Currently I’m working with Veenweide Atelier on different multidisciplinary projects, for instance on scalable futures for reed, collaborating with a scientific lab in finding ways to apply reed fibers in non-woven textiles and bioplastics. The scientists work on finding ways to extract the fibers and theorize about the outcomes whereas the artistic research works with the extracted fibers to see how these fibers behave when working with it, using different techniques, combining them with bio-based resins and softeners, in the search for potential in a more intuïtive and experimental way. At the same time I organize hands-on workshops to hang out with reed cutters, growers and thatchers, foregrounding situated ecological knowledge and real-world material practices.

• Name: Alasdair Jones
• Affiliation: Associate Professor, Department of Geography, University of Exeter

Procedural starting point

The way I described my methods or process in my last funding application was: My last funding application was for a large #interdisciplinary grant for public health-related funding. As a health-led application, the #methods were presented in a rather #formalised, #procedural and #objective way. For instance, the application talked about how certain formal methods would be #applied, and how #predetermined numbers of research participants (e.g. interviewees) would be involved.

What I actually did was / what I usually do is: I am a big advocate of the #rigorous collection and analysis of data in research (and I'm thinking here specifically about #qualitative research, which is the sort of research I conduct). However, while this can imply carefully and accurately following and implementing existing processes and approaches, in my view it also means being mindful of context and #tailoring #methods to #context. In this respect, my actual methods of working do prioritise methodological rigour (including the importance of #transparency), but they are likely to be more #iterative and #contingent than the methods I describe in any research #design (as I strongly believe our methodological approaches need to be #sensitive to real-world conditions etc).

My previous experience between 'academic' and 'artistic' work:

My previous experience between ‘academic’ and ‘artistic’ work on funded projects is relatively limited, unfortunately. I have, however, worked on a range of transdisciplinary Horizon 2020 COST Actions, including one currently (CitySenz) concerned with the exploring bottom-up production of urban ambiences from various disciplinary perspectives and using a range of disciplinary methodologies. Through these COST Actions I have been able to engage with academics and practitioners concerned with the production of urban space, in particular, and I have looked to build on this experience in my teaching. Specifically, I am due to contribute to Exeter’s postgraduate module Transdisciplinary Collaborations for Emergent Futures next year, delivering a session on ‘theory of change.’ In addition, my PhD research was concerned with the production of public space in and around London’s Southbank Centre (its central arts centre), and this research connected to artistic work in a number of ways - through interviews with artistic directors/curators at the Southbank Centre, as well as the use of photographs throughout my analysis.

• Name: Alan Latham
• Affiliation: Professor of Human Geography, UCL

Procedural starting point

The way I described my methods or process in my last funding application was: I described using a range of #qualitative and #observational methods, these included #interviews

I start with a problem that seems important to me.
Sometimes this is less a problem and more a puzzle (or a combination of both).
Because I am a social scientist often I notice something (say an event, or something novel that has suddenly showed up in my immediate environment) and wonder what other social scientists are saying about that thing.
If what people are saying does not seem to adequately address the problem or puzzle I’ve noticed, I start to think how I might go about understanding it.
Thinking about what I can do is based around the research techniques I know about, have used in the past.
These methods also implicitly

What I actually did was / what I usually do is: What I actually do is looser and more #improvised

My previous experience between 'academic' and 'artistic' work:

I collaborated with an artist on a number of projects a few years ago. It was energising to work together, but also kind of challenging as we had quite different aims. We generated a whole range of interesting possible questions. Our approach to these questions was different. I wanted to do more research and find something like the answers to the questions. The artist wanted to produce some art. The art was good – engaging and so on. Working with the artists also generated some distinctive research questions. It did not necessarily get me closer to working through the research questions Which after a while felt a little frustrating, as ultimately I want to try and answer (or address) my research questions.

• Name: Clemens Driessen
• Affiliation: cultural geography, wageningen university

Procedural starting point

The way I described my methods or process in my last funding application was: i tend to talk about semi-structured #interviews, maybe #focus_groups, or #expert_workshops. in general: = starting with #literaturereview on a particular topic, associated issue. = then moving into some form of (multispecies) #ethnography, in which I aim to #spend_time with human experts as well as (building on their approaches) seeking to observe the active shaping of environments by #nonhumans. how do #humans and nonhumans make sense of their environment and each other? this can be framed as #cultivating_attentiveness = i would announce different field sites, places defined by somewhat different conditions and experiences = this could be complemented by #archival work or #historical #literature, situating the issue and its associated #context and questions. perhaps i would use the notion of #genealogy here. = the supposed analysis phase i would probably describe as #discourse analysis, and could involve some form of #mapping, #diagramming, or otherwise #making that fits academic outputs, leading to journal publications, speaking back to the literature, and some form of public #outreach

What I actually did was / what I usually do is: = i go some place, e.g. a pig farm, a palace, where probably #something_interesting_is_going_on, and i try to get to know people there and what #motivates and #bothers them, as well as #wonder what i find weird, sad, annoying, smelly, or otherwise #noticable. = i like to think there's a productive role for the threat of boredom (what is actually really interesting here) and panic (ow i promised this thing but what am i actually going to do?) = then i get into a collecting/reading frenzy/stupor, just gather and maybe read everything academic on the topic (as time allows) and meanwhile/earlier also reading just everything nonacademic, following rather random associations. that's also a good way to see what may be actually interesting and would make for a relevant interevention in the moral experience/affective politics of the situation - with a view of actually making something (in collaboration with someone arriving from another logic or background, e.g. farmer, artist) - this could be considered a breaching experiment in the field site, but with a straight face: suggesting this is just a normal response to the situation (e.g. making a game with pigs, or proposing some black box/mcguffin) = based on this i connect abstract questions, big concepts (time, ethics, sovereignty, freedom, play) to open these up in relation to scholarly debates, e.g. on deliberative democracy, interspecies play, sovereign space, human/nature relations - and move across these terms as discussed in literature and done in practice, without privileging either abstract or concrete, theoretical or practical/applied. = then write about the process of making/thinking in a way that does justice to the combination now of course the question is whether the grant proposal or this self mystification is more honest/real. looking forward to this event thanks for organizing

My previous experience between 'academic' and 'artistic' work:

several people have been saying i’m actually an artist pretending to be a scientist. i for a while thought i was a scientist pretending to be an artist. i realize now both may be the case. which means i’m more confused than ever.

i like to collaborate with a range of people, drawing on a range of fascinations and approaches, not being very worried most of the time which belongs where. i do realize there’s elements to generating novelty, messing about ‘units of analysis’ - and then being very rigorous and systematic in analysing and reporting on this.

things that come to mind are:

–treating the technoscientific development of in vitro/cultured meat as working along the lines of artistic interventions: disclosing new worlds, unsettling everyday ontological certainties (what actually is real meat? who am i as a consumer? what is my food culture really about?). favourite notions from the art/critcism world, such as paradox, ambiguity/ambivalence, were helpful to use to undermine existing approaches to consumer studies or impacts of technologies which assume clearly delineated subjects and objects

–with Henriette we wrote a book collecting a range of professionals and collectives working on water. we included theatre makers, composers, engineers, architects, physical geographers, etc. It was interesting to focus with them on the process of making, the development of crafts, learning with materials, the experience of surprise, … check it out! - https://valiz.nl/en/publications/water-works

–a decade ago i organized an exchange between phd students at my university, many of whom were natural science researchers, and two art schools. we supported collaboration across fields in the form of exchanges of materials, knowledges, ways of working, and ways of communicating. it was fun.

–most recently i contributed to an exhibition where the research i was doing led to a collaborative process of making, ending in a black box with various peep holes installed on the roof of a 17th century palace. this felt productive as it generated an occasion for me reading a range of works with a very specific set of questions in mind (what are ways to understand what ‘perspective’ does to experience) and seek ways of inviting people to enter into dialogue with this experience, without myself taking a very strong or developed position.

dg-publish: true full_name: John Boy affiliation: Assistant professor (with tenure) at Leiden University methods_in_last_funding_application: "This is from the most recent successful application: 'The main mode of inquiry will be ethnographic. Ethnography refers to the systematic study of cultural phenomena from the point of view of those who make and live the cultures being studied. It involves application of a variety of qualitative techniques—among them interviews and observation—usually over the course of longer-term research. Aside from drawing on the methodological toolkit of anthropology and sociology, we can build on foundational studies that scholars in these fields have done on hackers and other communities of technologists [references omitted].'" what_i_actually_did: "That description was productively vague and gave me space to improvise. I ended up not doing much (formal) interviewing. Instead I did more observant participation and 'participant comprehension' (as Harry Collins calls the process of trying to understand a group and what it does instead of observing it)."

• Name: John Boy
• Affiliation: Assistant professor (with tenure) at Leiden University

Procedural starting point

The way I described my methods or process in my last funding application was: This is from the most recent successful application: "The main #mode_of_inquiry will be ethnographic. #ethnography refers to the systematic study of #cultural phenomena from the point of view of those who make and live the cultures being studied. It involves application of a variety of #qualitative #techniques —among them #interviews and #observation —usually over the course of longer-term research. Aside from drawing on the #methodological #toolkit of anthropology and sociology, we can build on foundational studies that scholars in these fields have done on hackers and other communities of technologists [references omitted]."

What I actually did was / what I usually do is: That description was #productively_vague and gave me space to #improvise. I ended up not doing much (formal) interviewing. Instead I did more observant participation and " #participant_comprehension" (as Harry Collins calls the process of trying to understand a group and what it does instead of observing it).

My previous experience between 'academic' and 'artistic' work

I worked on a proposal with a group of artists (ARK) in response to an Ars Electronica call for art-science projects. The theme was broadly on #digital_infrastructures, #care, #urban_space, and #storytelling. Writing the proposal was very educational because the artists drove the process and I just tried my best to be helpful. I joined several video calls and also came into their studio for a jazz performance and some vino. The group also made an artsy portrait of me for the proposal. Ultimately the proposal was not successful and the collaboration petered out again.

A more successful example of combining academic and artistic work may be my #short_story I wrote in a #creative_writing workshop at NIAS, “The Report,” that was published in The Sociological Review Magazine.

Finally, for my current research, I organized a workshop (also at NIAS) with technologists, many of whom straddle the worlds of art and technical practice. This is especially true about technologists interested in permacomputing.

• Name: Lauren Wagner
• Affiliation: Associate Professor in Urban Interactions & Diasporic Mobilities, Maastricht University

Procedural starting point

The way I described my methods or process in my last funding application was: largely #ethnographic, about #spending_time with people in order to pay #attention to the #stuff_that_happens_in_between what they say and what they do. I also suggested some artistic #collaboration as part of the societal #impact, but I really don't know what that means

What I actually did was / what I usually do is: the project was not funded, but I am still doing the #artistic #collaboration… not sure how that happened? and I'm still working on how to address the #squishiness in between as something that can be #scientifically_observed. Now I'm more interested in how #artistic_observation' works in #complement.

My previous experience between 'academic' and 'artistic' work:

A long time ago, I thought I would be a professional in making films. I miss that sometimes.

• Name: Mari Bastashevski
• Affiliation: Visual Artist and a Postdoc at Wageningen University Cult Geo Group

Procedural starting point

The way I described my methods or process in my last funding application was: My most recent funding application was connected to NWO, and I have also participated in several Horizon application rounds. I find the process cumbersome and often centered on #jargon, #oversimplifications, and impossible promises, rather than on the value and overall #cohesion of intellectual ideas. Taken too seriously, it can quickly resemble a kind of humiliation ritual. When writing proposals for both art and academic grants, I aim for clarity and authenticity. I prefer to avoid formulaic grant language, unrealistic promises, and managerial persuasion. This often means relying on external editorial support to reshape my proposals so they fit the required model. That said, I use application deadlines as a way to initiate new projects and distill ideas. The #work_begins_regardless, and even #without_funding, something of value emerges from the process. Many colleagues experience rejection as emotionally taxing. I do not take it personally. However, I find that meetings connected to large funding applications are often excessively oriented toward anticipating what might #please_the_funder, rather than engaging with the actual content of the proposed project. This can feel draining and uninspiring. One notable development is the way academic funding programs have begun to #adopt_vocabulary of art and artistic research, while excluding artists and any reflection on the extensive theoretical and practical histories behind these terms. Adding artists to diverse academic research projects has become a part of reinventing European universities. Most of the time such initiatives position artists as amplifiers of scientific developments, rather than equally compelling authors of their own. At the same time artists struggle when it comes to making distinction between scientific developments and their application, in particular in regard to novel technologies. In part, because the reasons behind such developments are either not sufficiently legible outside the very niche communities dedicated to specific projects or are actually too complex. This however is a recent movement with a short memory. Art and science collaboration share a long history of influence when it comes to process and discovery, and even which questions are worth asking in the first place. The new institutional language of "collaboration" tends to obscure rather than lead with this, placing academic science as the more elite #site_of_knowledge_production and #art_as_its_synthetic_arm for the outreach. The work that i feel is worth doing leads with a theory that a coordinated #encounter between two, art and science, each taken seriously on its own terms, produces the type of knowledge neither can arrive at, in isolation. 

What I actually did was / what I usually do is: I would say my actual method of working is more rigorously organized around #meaning, #process, #attention_to_detail, modes of #collaboration, and value of ideas #concepts and projects to different other projects and people across disciplines. It is geared towards #discovery (including that of interesting questions) over #solutionism. I also take history of #aesthetics and the ethics of aesthetics a bit more seriously than it’s commonly warranted in academic discourse. The challenge is to keep being open, where the working conditions (of scarcity) persuade us to compete against each other at every turn.

Recently I am becoming interested in organizing art and science around the use of a model. What do I mean by a model? A model here would mean some form of a structured material form that draws on and re-arranges specific targets from existing realities in order to produce a multifold #proposition for addressing a problem. The #model becomes the center of the collaborative process and a way to handle, test, and re-imagine the nature of the problem being examined across different modes of interpretation.

Drawing on #Michael_Weisberg’s theory of working and speculative models, and models as forms of world-making, as well as #Isabelle_Stengers’s writing on epistemological breaks, I would love to pair up with people in a project to trace how the use of models has and continues to produce insight across disciplines.

My previous experience between 'academic' and 'artistic' work:

I have had an active art practice since 2009 and I have held various academic positions for most of that time until the present.I have had an active art practice since 2009 and I have held various academic positions for most of that time until the present. I honestly could not tell you where one ends and another begins.

I finished my Ph.D. in 2024, in the Architecture and Design department at a Norwegian university. During that time I was a guest researcher at the Amsterdam School of #Cultural_Analysis, ran a winter school that led to some exhibitions and a book, did an exchange year at an architecture atelier in Lausanne, and taught a seminar in Amsterdam. Before that I spent nearly ten years doing #field_research and #counter-forensic work, a lot of it around how technology shapes the scale and pace of #modern_conflict, always alongside academic work, such as fellowships at a few research institutes in New Haven, New York, and London. My early background is in art, film, and media studies, and studying philosophy with Reza Negarestani in 2019 pulled me toward #philosophy_of_science, the #temporal politics of technology, and #using_models as a way of connecting art, ecological science, and design. Broadly speaking, my early work was focused on how #technology reshaped and reorganised the modern conflict to cut across #ideological_binaries and how the #platform_economy integrated image to #instrumentalize the representation of others in favor of conflict economies. My more recent work, drawing on models and concepts articulated by Isabelle Stengers, Bernard Stiegler, Alfred North Whitehead, Lorraine Daston, Vinciane Despret, among others, has evolved into #designing_virtual_environments and #designing_processes that reorganize the #hierarchies_of_knowledge that place the human above the animal, and the animal equal to or above the machine. So what I can and love to contribute to project I guess is a kind of bridge-building between these different languages and the things people are working on in these areas, and negotiation of meaning across these registers. At the same time, while my disciplinary fluency is broad the range of actual topics i have a knowledge of is project-specific that is to say, far from…encyclopedic.

• Name: Olivia Reschofsky
• Affiliation: artist

Procedural starting point

The way I described my methods or process in my last funding application was: We see our work as a #potential_space, a carefully considered #practice that is #activated_by_and_with_others. We immerse our #audience in a #sensory_experience. #Spectators are never passive #witnesses. They are always #participants, #peers, or #temporary_collaborators. We operate outside conventional presentation spaces, working primarily in #public areas with specific #communities.

What I actually did was / what I usually do is: It is pretty much this, in a less fancy way of course :) #accurate

My previous experience between 'academic' and 'artistic' work:

I did a master in art and education where I had to do an empirical research and write a thesis. My research was to see if integrating public performance art into the class of civic education would stimulate high school students empathy to social and political issues. It was a small intervention with a group of students but in a proper academic research settings.

• Name: Ruth Benschop
• Affiliation: Senior-researcher at research centre What Art Knows, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences

Procedural starting point

The way I described my methods or process in my last funding application was: #auto-ethnography, #artistic #research, #methods-in-the-making

What I actually did was / what I usually do is: It covers it #accurate

My previous experience between 'academic' and 'artistic' work:

Most of my work for the last 20 years has been in this area between academic and artistic work. I have spent a lot of time supporting artistic research that tries to remain between and into creating (institutional) conditions that allow such work to happen and be warranted in appropriate ways. I started out in qualitative social sciences (STS) and was always interested in writing in ways that were experimental and performative as well as in research instruments and how we are our own research instruments and how we hone ourselves in rigourous, attentive, reflective practices. Since 2008 I work at a research center within higher arts education in maastricht in which we support artistic research as intimate, collaborative and performative ethnography. Recently I have started a new research project called Oefenen Oefenen which is interested in how artists practice, experiment, rehearse etcetera and how they become good at doing that. I am interested in how they create criteria for their practices of practicing, disciplinary differences and also how we can learn more about situations of sharing knowledge as instances of practicing.

I also supervise and teach artistic research practices that are between academic and artistic work, at BA, MA and PhD and PD levels.

• Name: Ying-Tzu Lin
• Affiliation: postdoctoral researcher, Utrecht University

Procedural starting point

The way I described my methods or process in my last funding application was: In NIAS fellowship application I proposed to do 'cook- #along' cooking #ethnography. In my current job application I didn't specify method but focus on #community #practices as an entrance of #neighbourhood level research.

What I actually did was / what I usually do is: I did manage to #test_out what it means as 'cooking ethnography'. In the latter case, I volunteered in free shops to gain #access of information and event organisation.

My previous experience between 'academic' and 'artistic' work:

I have a life which I work as an academic and having social and family life with artists around. As an academic, there is a set of skills, a system of language that I work with. In my daily life outside of work, I participate, observe and sometimes help in artistic works. Artistic works from visual art to music involve relentless handcrafts and practices, the practices contain quite a lot of embodied and tacit knowledge that artists themselves don’t necessary want and could articulate in languages. I often find myself contribute thinking along or talking through ideas as a way of contribution/ involvement. For example, being a ‘script writer‘ in a documentary project who actually oversees the process and navigating story lines, or helping with funding application for art organizations. On the other hand, what I’ve learned from the experiences also made me realized, or shifting research focus on capturing ‘unspoken knowledge‘ of the world. It was also in artistic context, I experimented my cooking ideas, creative writing to express my message different than usual ‘output‘ I would deliver. I think it’s the mentality of daring to try and crafting skills that I take from working in the artistic context. I never thought I am an artist how ever I did end up in documentary, theater and music projects and now I am actually working with an artist in creating a storytelling board game in a research project. Mostly of time I have little idea what I am doing but they are mostly fun.