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Purpose – The purpose of the chapter is to introduce visual methods and, more specifically, arts-based forms of visual methods, as an innovative and emerging research approach within the study of sport and physical culture. The chapter examines the use of art and aesthetics as research data and as a representation issue. It draws upon the case of a research-based arts exhibition to represent and communicate research on bodies.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter details an international collaborative research project exploring the impact of health policies and their imperatives on schools in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The research formed the focus of an arts-based exhibition involving artists’ interpretations of the authors’ research findings. The chapter addresses salient epistemological and ontological issues of ‘representation’ and ‘interpretation’ in visual methods.

Findings – The chapter reveals how the use of arts-based approaches to research do not simply ‘represent’ research, but are constructive in the generation of new insights and forms of knowledge.

Research limitations/implications – The challenges of using arts-based and visual approaches to research are highlighted, particularly in terms of issues of knowledge interpretation. The ways in which these methods allow for lines of sight into life that written texts do not are highlighted.

Originality/value – The chapter provides an introduction to the use of arts-based visual methods in sport and physical culture research. Rather than focusing on visual methods solely as an approach to the collection of data, the chapter extends the discussion around visual methodology to include its use as a form of interpretation that generates and translates knowledge from a new perspective.

Drawing on findings from the project ‘Walking around with our cameras’ (2014–16), this chapter explores educative and methodological implications of arts-based research. The project on which this chapter is based was conducted in Bilbao (Spain) by two local organizations: Sala Rekalde, a contemporary art gallery; the Institute of Human Rights of Deusto University, a local artist and a group of migrant women. Analysis of this project offers insights into the ways that artistic practices afforded unique opportunities for migrant women to reconstruct and represent their migratory experiences. This chapter sheds light on the ways that participatory arts-based research can move across disciplines and enhance effective achievement on collaborative projects that work to give voice to the voiceless.

In this chapter, posthuman feminist researchers Jessica Ringrose and Shiva Zarabadi discuss schizoanalysis and intimate scholarship as ways to moveaway from the rationalist, Eurocentric, masculinist “I” in order to enable new and multiple forms of subjectivity that do not rely on otherization from an ideal norm of the humanist man. Instead, following Deleuze and Guattari’s notions of difference and becoming, the subject is fractured and becomes different in each encounter with time, space, others, feelings, memories, and self. Rather than clinging to the notion of a unified identity, Jessica and Shiva suggest adopting a “becoming-minoritarian” movement and attempting to exceed the trap of identity. The authors further discuss post-qualitative research methods that help to decenter this “I/eye”, including those involving schizoanalysis, affective intensities, art-based inquiry, and walking methodologies. Moreover, Jessica and Shiva argue that these can, and indeed, must, be taken up alongside multiple more conventional methods and made accessible to a variety of audiences so to have the widest impact. In experimenting with posthuman and post-qualitative theories, researchers must ensure that they are putting these theories to work in ways that can combat the massive social justice issues we currently face. In times of precarity, they contend, we must think differently while also using every theoretical and methodological tool at our disposal to make a difference in the world.

In this chapter we share some lessons we have learnt through doing research with – rather than on – people experiencing a range of mental health problems.

Our work has taken place within social, cultural, economic, and political contexts which create several problems or challenges. Through an extended dialogue, we explore how we have critically responded to each of these challenges across three phases of our projects: accessing and witnessing experiences of mental illness; understanding experiences of mental illness; and communicating mental health research.

Our aim is to stimulate creative responses to the question of how to do and disseminate research that is most likely to be helpful to people experiencing mental health problems.

In this chapter I present a pedagogic encounter with an intense affective scene that occurred at a critical time in my PhD research. The encounter, which I call ‘what happened to data and me’, acts as an illustrative example of what may come from seeking out ways to account for contingency, complexity and contiguity by focussing on affect as a researchable phenomenon and affect as a productive force in a (post)qualitative inquiry. At the heart of ‘what happened to data and me’ is an unravelling of self, prompted by the realization of an onto-epistemological conflict between what my research was trying to do and how I, the researcher, was trying to go about the research. I invite the reader to return with me to ‘the snap’ and together witness how a snap experienced as a pedagogic encounter can create the conditions for transformative learning to occur – a learning that transforms an individual's relations with the world rendering them more capable. In conveying how ‘what happened to data and me’ rendered us (data, me, my supervisors, and more) more capable, I discuss how entering into artful relations with data can reconfigure the researcher–researched–research in affirming ways. I propose artful inquiry to do data in a way that accentuates the art of data, creating the conditions for data to transgress into da(r)ta. I conclude with six insights that researchers interested in ‘the post’ may like to consider. The intention is that hindsight will become foresight, not only highlighting what transgressive data can do but also drawing attention to the potential of critically and creatively engaging with the (post)qualitative inquiry.

This chapter features our innovative endeavors to inquire into an African-American student's potentially sensitive stories in a methodologically fluid and ethically delicate manner through two generative methods: digital narrative inquiry and musical narrative inquiry. Through a meta-level “inquiry into inquiry” approach, this work explores how we engaged in the digital and musical restorying of the participant's “Wounded Healer” narrative and uncovered its dynamism, cultural richness, and nuances. We subsequently represented the findings in humanizing ways using multimedia and music. Drawing on the insights from exploring these novel methods of digital and musical inquiry, our work illuminates noteworthy elements of narrative research: generativity, transformativity, interpersonal ethics, aesthetic ethics, and communal ethics. Additionally, the potential issue of trustworthiness in fluid narrative inquiries is addressed.

In this comparative study, we explore the ways eight queer university students from Trinidad and Tobago and New Brunswick, Canada, use cellphilm production (cellphone + film production + intention) to share their experiences, make calls for change, and forge solidarities across racial, cultural, and national contexts. Engaging in cellphilm production as a research method for social change, we ask: What are queer, trans, and non-binary students’ experiences in campus spaces? What are the commonalities and tensions that exist between their experiences? How might cellphilm production work to disrupt unsafe campus spaces and create transnational queer solidarities? Through cellphilm production, participants crafted narratives highlighting significant systemic barriers, and speaking back to micro and macro aggressions. Both participating groups expressed feelings of exclusion and institutional neglect and highlighted their university’s disregard toward accommodating physical spaces, such as washrooms, downplaying of verbal hostilities, and other microaggressions. Participants also noted that students were at the forefront of creating purposefully queer spaces. Our comparative study disrupts the erasure of the experiences of queer, trans, and non-binary university students in Trinidad and Tobago and New Brunswick and speaks back to hegemonic whiteness in the context of queer campus spaces in New Brunswick, Canada.