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The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibilities opened up by those messy, unclear and indeterminate data in research situations that may be described as being in the shadow and may as such remain in a state of vagueness and indeterminacy.

The paper draws on the extant literature on shadow organizing and post-qualitative methodologies. It focuses attention on not-yet (or shadow data) in order to ponder over what researchers do to data when they are not (yet) black-boxed as such. At the same time, it investigates what it is that not-yet data do to researchers.

Four types of “not-yet” data – illegible, wondrous and disorienting, hesitant and worn out – are presented and discussed. Data are illegible when a researcher is in the position of not knowing how to interpret what is in front of her/him. A second illustration is constructed around wonder, and poses the question of the feelings of surprise and disorientation that arise when facing uncanny realities. In a third situation, not-yet data are narrated as hesitation, when a participant feels conflicting desires and the researchers hesitates in interpreting. The fourth illustration depicts not-yet data as data that have been corrupted, that vanish after time or are worn out.

Not-yet data belong to researchers practice but can also be found in other professional practices which are concerned with the indeterminacy of shadowy situations. It is argued that situations like these constitute opportunities for learning and for the moral and professional development, so long as indeterminacy is kept open and a process of “slowing down” both action and interpretation is nurtured.

This paper is of value for taking the metaphor of shadow organizing further. Moreover, it represents a rare attempt to bring the vast debate on post-qualitative research/methodologies into management studies, which with very few exceptions seems to have been ignored by organization studies.

The purpose of this paper is to offer an exemplar of post-qualitative “fieldwork in philosophy” research. The paper proposes features of such philosophical fieldwork and adumbrates examples of concepts that have emerged in the process of undertaking the research.

The paper is conceptual, drawing on an abductive approach. Post-qualitative understandings that question the validity of methodology and theory as separable entities are operationalised.

The paper provides insights into how post-qualitative research might be undertaken and what might emerge in the process.

This paper fulfils a need for an example of research that is post-qualitative. Additionally, the possibilities for doing “fieldwork in philosophy” are extended, as is the work of Jacque Rancière with respect to emancipation.

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 reflects on how ethics was managed in Basque educational ethnographic research. Specifically, it addresses researcher positionality when relating to research collaborators in an attempt to manage inclusive ethics in situ. Nowadays, most research is evaluated by an ethical review board that ensures adequate research practice. However, unexpected fieldwork events need to be managed in the field, and this chapter addresses the impact of these events on the relationship between researchers and collaborators. Influenced by a post-qualitative stance we posit that research collaborators should be included in the research process. It reflects on the data collected during an ongoing ethnographic study with higher education students. The method used includes several interview meetings between researchers and collaborators, multimodal representations of collaborators' learning, and participants' self-observations. In the interviews, participants' discourses, representations, and self-observations were collaboratively analysed. The ethnographic data from these meetings show how researchers use a collaborative approach to practise ethics. Through such meetings, the knowledge derived from the ethnographic data is co-constructed in a research relationship where participants engage in dialogue and negotiation about the discourse created around them. Based on this relationship, we propose the concept of inclusive ethics as a process requiring an honest, inclusive, and collaborative relationship with the research subject.

This paper introduces the concept of posthuman co-production. It explores how processual and relational onto-epistemologies inform an artful, response-able (Barad 2007) feminist new materialist praxis that decentres the human and re-centres matter.

Posthuman co-production gives prominence to crafting “dartaphacts” (Renold, 2018); creative research artefacts, carrying “what matters” and enacting change that can be mapped across time and multiple “problem spaces” (Lury, 2020), as an expansive, post-qualitative praxis of slow, co-production.

The paper stories this praxis across three “fugal figurations” providing glimpses into the post-qualitative journeys of assembled dartaphacts in the policy and practice field of relationships and sexuality education (RSE) in Wales. Each fugue hints at the polytical, resourceful and living potential of dartaphacts in the making and their mattering over a period of six years. Collectively, they chart a rhizomatic journey that re-configures co-production as a response-able, becoming-with what matters.

As more-than-human forces for change, dartaphacts continue to surface “the cries of what matters” (Stengers 2019) for children and young people well beyond the periods of funded research and engagement, giving new meaning to the sustainability and material legacies of research impact.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, Health Education is socio-critical in orientation and is offered as a subject that can offer credits towards the national secondary school qualification. The purpose of this paper is to explore the learning experiences of people who studied Health Education to the final level of secondary schooling in Aotearoa New Zealand. The authors focus specifically on how the subject is taught; or the pedagogical practices that are “put to work” in the Health Education learning environment.

Using in-depth interviews as the authors’ method of data production, they experiment with a post-qualitative approach to analysis while traversing the theoretical terrain of new materialism. In doing so, they explicate the non-human and human elements that are arranged in a pedagogical assemblage – and explore what these elements can do.

The authors found that an array of pedagogical practices were put to work in the senior secondary school Health Education classroom: Student-centred approaches, a non-judgemental and energetic tone to teaching, deployment of human and non-human resources, and students connecting with the community. The authors argue that these practices open up possibilities for a critical Health Education.

This research addresses an empirical gap in the literature by focusing on Health Education in the senior secondary levels of schooling. The findings in this paper may provide readers who are Health Education teachers with ideas that could be of material use to them in their teaching practice. In terms of implications for researchers, the authors demonstrate how putting “new” theory and methodological approaches to work in the area of school-based Health Education can produce novel ways of thinking about the subject and what it can do.

The shifting nature of the pedagogical assemblage can ignite new ways of thinking about teaching practice in the Health Education classroom and the capacities that result for learners. In combination with a post-qualitative approach to analysis, the paper provides a novel approach to exploring Health Education.

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.

Working creatively as a researcher should be a core foundation in doctoral studies, though it may be an isolating, even risky, endeavour. The purpose of this paper is to share the author’s journey through the “darkness” of innovation in research methodology.

At the heart of this research journey was Portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1983), which emerged early in the post-modern evolution of qualitative research. While exploring Portraiture, the author found researchers used this methodology in varying ways: application, appropriation and interpretation. In stumbling through Portraiture, the author discovered patchwork as their bricoleur’s toolbag. Patchwork provided a torch that gave light to the darkness of the research process enabling interpretation of Portraiture for alignment of method and research problematic[1].

Looking back at the research journey, the author recognises the steps into post-qualitative research and the need for methodological innovators to share their journeys for inspiration, to develop understanding and open the way to greater creativity and innovation during the research process.

This paper provides an original view to Portraiture along with the addition of patchwork as a way of engaging with methodology as well as data.

This paper aims to offer an innovative approach to reflecting on research and practice around doctoral study and supervision. In the opening section of the paper, the authors discuss the idea that academic development as a doctoral candidate is concerned with how researchers write themselves into being as certain kinds of researchers, and how, in doing so, they become a character, like their supervisors, in the “figured world” of their research. This process of “becoming” can, the authors argue, be nurtured or hindered by different kinds of supervision practices.

With regard to the authors’ own experiences of doctoral supervision, the paper explores how their use of post-qualitative practices and methodologies encouraged new forms of intersubjectivity and academic development as their supervisory relationship advanced alongside the thesis itself.

The authors present the script of an ethnodrama (Saldana, 2111) which they wrote and performed on a number of occasions, as an alternative way of expressing their experiences of being in a relationship as doctoral supervisor and supervisor.

This choice of ethnodrama emerged out of a frustration with what the authors felt were increasingly predictable ways of discussing and reflecting upon the philosophy, content and assessment methods of postgraduate research and supervision across the educational disciplines.

The authors hope that their exploration of the imaginative spaces created through doctoral supervision will encourage other postgraduates and their supervisors to experiment with working creatively across interdisciplinary spaces and creating radical and even risky ways of mediating and sharing postgraduate teaching and learning relationships.