Our Senior Creative Facilitator Mary Robson writes:
In one of our ‘methods swap’ calls a few years ago, my colleague Ericka Johnson told me about Donna Haraway’s implosion method, the notion of investigating how an object is embedded in the world and how the world may be embedded in an object, and how she had used it in her teaching practice. We talked of how interesting it would be to apply and adapt the method for interdisciplinary research projects.
Fast forward to October 2024 and Professor Jane Macnaughton invited me to facilitate a workshop for the project ‘Biomedicine, Clinical Knowledge, and the Humanities in Collaboration: A Novel Epistemology for Radically Interdisciplinary Health Research and Policy-Work on Post-Covid-19 Syndrome’ at Linköping University.
The brief for the day-long workshop was to support everyone in thinking how best to take forward interdisciplinary work in the project both across and within its different research strands. Participants needed to be comfortable and feel at ease whilst being curious and engaged. They were asked to expect thought-provoking conversations they wouldn’t have otherwise, in a setting that managed to be informal yet also intellectually rigorous. Everyone was invited to bring an artefact that spoke to them about their work on Post Covid. The artefact could be a physical object or an image and not necessarily literally related to their research – it could be a metaphor, a symbol, or something that could be conceptualised.
The workshop began with an invitation to the attendees to spend time with their object and create a data card with its title, its provenance, a physical description and its history and significance, illustrating how it represented their current work. People then chose someone who they don’t usually work with and took time to introduce their work to each other through their objects.
After a break, the pairs sought out another pair to form groups of four. They introduced each other through their objects and discussed their reasons for choosing them. They listened to the stories, noting similarities and differences. The groups of four then expanded into groups of eight and drew out emergent themes. Finally, these different groups met around a circular cloth with a file index box at its centre representing the work of the project on Post Covid. They were invited to catalogue and curate their objects in relation to the centre and to others. The connections were mapped and additional data points added as they were discovered through conversation.
After lunch, we held a focused conversation about the morning’s activities followed by a collective imagining of the success of the project in five years’ time. The group then developed a pragmatic list of next steps to help them achieve their goals. I was struck by how useful ‘interdisciplinary objects’ were as a means of sharing ideas and building connections. One researcher commented that he began the day as a sceptic but found the process excellent and rewarding. Another said they wished such large-scale projects began with this process, that it was valuable to reflect across research interests before ‘diving in’. Positive feedback was also received from the project lead Kristin Zeiler, who remarked:
“Such a creative process, where we all brought artefacts to think with, engaged in small group conversations, and formulated visions for the remaining years of the project – all led by Mary. Such a valuable contribution to our interdisciplinary conversations in the research team.”
