Interdisciplinary Research: Practising the In-Between

Abstract

This article will demonstrate that practice-led photographic research offers an example of dialogical encounter. Through recourse to an outline of my own practice and the experience of completing a practice-led doctoral thesis, the article will account for photographic practice and interdisciplinary research in terms of dialogism. This will demonstrate that visual research is a productive nexus: it does not simply concern itself with the products of creative practice, but is a generative space itself. The article will also discuss interdisciplinarity from a personal perspective on practice-led research, which, over time, has developed into an interdisciplinary mode of working. The radical notion of the dialogical self will be considered with specific reference to interdisciplinarity and practice-led research. The dialogical encounter will also be considered in relation to transformative learning encounters and what is at play in learning through practice, an encounter which places its protagonists at risk. However, far from being a negative state of affairs, this interstitial space in which the researcher/learner/teacher is lost and found is in fact a highly productive place in which to be.