Becoming Scholars with Data
Exploring Imaginative Methodological Practices
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7577/rerm.6149Keywords:
Imagination, post-humanism, Relational ontology, EntanglementAbstract
Our intention in this inquiry was to imaginatively engage with data to see what may be made possible. Informed by the ontological turn (Zembylas, 2017) and a call for creative engagement with data (Wolgemuth et al., 2025), we leveraged cognitive tools (Egan, 1997, 2005), to playfully engage with interview transcripts. Despite approaching the inquiry from a relational, more-than-human ontology, we found ourselves continually constrained by humanist understandings. Our inquiry highlights how implicit and deeply-entrenched our assumptions about research are; we illuminate these assumptions by exploring iterative problematics that arose in our playful engagement. Our engagement in this inquiry allowed the data to work on us, as we worked on the data, producing us differently as researchers and as scholars. Our experience with imaginative methodology opened up possibility and proliferated the ‘what if?’ required to move beyond dominant ways of knowing. However, our experience demonstrates the tensions we continue to navigate as becoming-researchers.
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