An alternative dynamics of research dissemination? The case of the g word tour

Abstract

This article discusses my experience of developing and presenting a multi-media research dissemination programme comprising presentations, workshops, a visual exhibit and a poetry performance collectively referred to as the g word tour. Programme elements were presented, exhibited and performed between November 2018 and July 2019 to audiences in 25 universities and research centres in the UK and Republic of Ireland. Each element of the programme was based on data collected for a research project: Gender(s) at Work, which investigated the impact of gender on workplace experiences and career trajectories among staff in a UK university. The article argues that this active approach to research dissemination involved dynamics of contraflow and diffraction and that rather than completing or closing the research process created new spaces for dialogue and engagement.

Keywords

audience dissemination engagement gender higher education multimodal creative research methods revisualisation

Introduction

This article argues that research dissemination, rather than completing or closing the research process, has potential to create new spaces for dialogue and generate wider engagement and change. The article draws on my experimentation with an active approach to research dissemination, i.e. one using ‘tailored materials that have been transformed, beyond the journal article or conference paper, for targeted audiences, where discussion of the meaning and application of findings is facilitated’ (Walter et al., 2003: 17). The dissemination programme entitled the g word tour was based on data collected for a research project investigating the impact of gender on workplace experiences and career trajectories among staff in a post-1992¹ UK university. Data was revisualised, ‘that is transforming research data, visual or otherwise into new multimodal creative outputs’ (Mannay, 2019: 659), into a programme or ‘menu’ comprising PowerPoint presentations, workshops, a visual exhibit and a poetry performance. These were presented, exhibited and performed, singly and in combination between November 2018 and July 2019 across 25 universities and research centres in the UK and Republic of Ireland.

The dissemination of research findings is an integral part of the academic research process and conventionally assumed to be ‘the end-point of a linear research design . . . a ‘relatively complete, apolitical, formal act or process . . . in which the researcher is viewed as an authoritative bearer of knowledge (Barnes et al., 2003: 160). As academic researchers we are both explicitly and tacitly encouraged to lay out our work in discipline-specific ways: reports, conference papers, journal articles, books or chapters and of course, the ubiquitous PowerPoint presentation. We ‘anticipate and reproduce conventional formats; they keep the academic wheels turning and are the building blocks of our academic credibility’ (Carruthers Thomas, 2019a). Traditional forms of dissemination are aimed at an academic audience while the active task of applying research to practice, policy or people is often seen as lying beyond the research process (Keen and Todres, 2007: 4). Research dissemination is ever more tightly interwoven with the contemporary discourse of research impact (Evans, 2016), yet there has been a dearth of critical literature on the topic of dissemination (Barnes et al., 2003; Keen and Todres, 2007). Moreover, conventional dissemination practice is underpinned by ‘technical-rational models that are based on positivist understandings of social reality’ (Barnes et al., 2003: 148), an awkward fit with the complexities and contradictions valued in qualitative data. Encouragingly, a body of work is now foregrounding creative approaches to both research and dissemination (Renold, 2017, 2019; Renold et al., 2020; Pauwels and Mannay, 2019; Seal and O’Neill, 2019; O’Neill and Roberts, 2019; Heng, 2019 inter alia). This article intends to make a contribution to this emerging field.

The article challenges the normative understanding of dissemination as closure and articulates an alternative approach, involving dynamics of contraflow and diffraction. I adapt the definition of contraflow: traffic travelling in both directions on a shared carriageway (Cambridge University Press, 2020), to capture simultaneous phenomena of familiarity and discovery. I take up Barad’s application of diffraction to the social sciences (1997, 2007) to represent disruptive potential, generating new patterns of understanding. To introduce and contextualise these discussions, the article first summarises the research on which the g word tour programme is based and the factors behind this experiment in active dissemination. I then outline the development and practice of the six programme elements, and the use of a reflective journal and audience evaluation tool throughout the tour. In the final section of the article, these threads are intertwined to propose an alternative dynamics of dissemination involving both a contraflow of familiarity and new knowledge and a diffraction rather than abstraction of data.

The research context: Gender(s) at Work

Data underpinning the g word tour were collected for the project Gender(s) at Work (2016–18), which I had conducted on site in a post-1992 UK university. Gender(s) at Work investigated the ways in which gender shapes everyday experiences of the university workplace and career trajectory over time. It constituted both ‘institutional research’ in the sense that its findings enhanced institutional intelligence about staff experiences of gender equality and contributed to the university’s equalities agenda but is distinct in that it is theoretically underpinned by Massey’s feminist geographical perspective on space, place and power (1991, 1993, 1994, 2005, inter alia). Massey conceptualises space as the product of social relations shaped by power as plural and in flux. This directs data analysis towards an understanding of the way gender operates as a ‘geography of power’ in the university workplace (Carruthers Thomas, 2019b). The research also explored the extent to which participants’ diverse and complex lived experiences trouble the prevailing career narrative of a linear, upward trajectory, often termed a ‘pipeline’ or ‘ladder’. The project’s hybrid character mirrored my dual role as an interdisciplinary social sciences researcher specialising in critical higher education (HE) studies, gender and inequalities, and as a university lead for the Athena SWAN Charter, the UK HE sector’s charter mark for gender equality (Advance, 2020). Thus, I work ‘critically on gender, drawing on geographical, sociological and educational concepts and methods . . . and in gender overseeing and implementing activities in relation to the sector’s flagship accreditation system’ (Carruthers Thomas, 2019b: 187).

Research participants were recruited via an open call to academic and professional services staff at any grade, in one post-1992 UK university. A total of 45 participants identifying as female (n = 28), male (n = 16) and gender non-binary (=1) were recruited. Data collection, using 45-minute individual narrative interviews and respondent-generated imagery (Pauwels, 2010: 552) took place between November 2016 and May 2017. Narrative enquiry privileges the singular lived in the social context and each interviewee was asked to talk about their experiences of the university as a workplace; their employment and career trajectories to date and future aspirations. They were also asked to reflect on the role of gender in shaping these experiences. A bespoke visual mapping task, integrated with the interview process, aimed to elicit psychosocial dimensions of space, place and gender. Interviewees were given a pen and a mapping sheet featuring three common shapes (circle, triangle, rectangle). They were asked to select the shape which best represented the university and with the pen, to locate themselves in relation to that shape. Participants were also allowed to modify and annotate their chosen shape, or to create their own. Rose argues ‘participant-generated visual materials are particularly helpful in exploring the taken-for-granted things in their research participants’ lives . . . gives them distance from what they are usually immersed in’ (2014: 27). Participants’ placing themselves in relation to their chosen shape initiated discussions of positioning, peripherality, centrality and power. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. Transcripts were returned to participants for verification.

Although the Gender(s) at Work research findings are not the primary focus of this article, I outline three broad themes here in order to contextualise the g word tour dissemination programme. The first theme is career, not as a linear, uninterrupted and gender-neutral trajectory, but as a wider mapping of linear identity across personal and professional territories. ‘Blocks, interruptions, stagnation and serendipity shape and complicate the career path . . . some careers are more likely to stagnate than others’ (Carruthers Thomas, 2019b: 199). The second theme concerns ways in which experiences of the university as a workplace and higher education as a sector are mediated by intersectionalities of gender, ethnicity, culture, age and sexual orientation. Certain bodies experienced ‘fitting’ or ‘belonging’ more or less easily in particular spaces of the university; seniority of role did not necessarily equate with a lived sense of power. The third theme concerns inconsistency between an organisational rhetoric of gender equality and lived experiences in the workplace and throughout working lives. Clear spaces emerged between the rhetoric of gender equality and lived experiences in the workplace and throughout working lives. Despite decades of equal opportunities legislation and institutional equality policies, the glass ceiling (Loden, 1985) the sometimes invisible barrier to success that women come up against in their careers, remains a feature of the HE sector. Elements of less familiar career archetypes: the glass cliff (Bruckmüller et al., 2014; Ryan and Haslam, 2005); the glass escalator (Budig, 2002; Williams, 2013) and the glass closet (Merriam-Webster, 2020) also surfaced in the transcripts.

The hybrid character of the Gender(s) at Work project was reflected in its dissemination plan. This included regular reporting to internal stakeholders, but also anticipated presentations of key findings to academic audiences via a range of conventional formats including conference papers (Carruthers Thomas, 2016, 2017), journal articles and book chapters (Carruthers Thomas, 2019b, in press). As findings emerged, so did the wider relevance of the findings for all institutions in the UK HE sector. Given that 32% of research participants were in professional services roles including Human Resources, Information Technology and Student Support, the findings also applied beyond a purely academic audience. What also became clear was that conventional dissemination methods would struggle to do justice to the sheer volume and rich complexity of 45 complex personal narratives and organisational ‘maps’. Moreover, attempting a neat transference of meaning via decontextualised universal themes and messages (Barnes et al., 2003) risked undermining the theoretical underpinning of the data analysis: Massey’s understanding of space as plural, fluid and inherently temporal; ‘a simultaneity of stories so far’ (2005: 130).

Materials and methods: the g word tour

At this point in the research process, two factors serendipitously prepared the ground for disseminating Gender(s) at Work research findings differently. The first was an award of small-scale internal funding to develop my equalities research and capacity within and beyond the university. The second was my membership of a community of practice within the university, exploring performative and creative methods of research practice and dissemination. The community of practice comprised researchers in various disciplines and at all career stages; its agenda grew out of Hill’s work on cabaret (2017) and provenance (Hill and Lloyd, 2018). Individual members of the community of practice experimented with the use of art, textiles, installation, music and poetry as means of conducting and presenting their research, through a series of seminars, workshops and collaborative conference presentations. My involvement encouraged me to think more critically about dissemination as a research practice and I began to experiment with visual and poetic methods of representing gendered dis/advantage in the HE workplace.

This point marked the beginning of my graphic social science practice; a ‘sociology with the image’ (Traue et al., 2019: 328), in which the visual is understood as a source of knowledge construction in itself, as well as a means of sharing analyses with others. Over time, I created four cartoon figures; embodiments of the glass ceiling, glass escalator, glass cliff and glass closet in an HE setting. In response to a call for unconventional contributions to the Sociological Review conference: Undisciplining: Conversations from the Edges, the cartoons became integral to the ‘graphic essay’ My Brilliant Career? An Investigation. This was in the format of a large-scale, hand-drawn comic strip, conforming to the structural conventions of an essay or article. A further call for innovative conference contributions in the form of poetic and performative work, from the Art of Management and Organisation (AoMO), resulted in the long research poem: Glass, combining participants’ words with original poetry. While the original dissemination plan for Gender(s) at Work remained largely in place, the stage was set for disseminating research findings beyond the usual boundaries. Attempting a further experiment in academic practice, I designed a dissemination ‘package’ bringing together My Brilliant Career? An Investigation and Glass with two PowerPoint presentations and two participative workshops.

The final programme comprised the following six options:

The Workplace Glassed and Gendered

A 45-minute PowerPoint presentation on the Gender(s) at Work research project. A standard reporting of rationale, methodology, findings and discussion, which also included selected participant stories read aloud by audience volunteers.

Mapping Career

A one-hour workshop inviting participants to develop visual alternative models of ‘career’ resonant with their own lived experiences. Participants work in pairs to explore and visually represent each other’s ‘potted career histories’; these visual representations are then used as tools both to reflect on prevailing narratives of ‘career’ in HE and to develop meaningful visual alternatives to the linear and reductive career metaphors of ‘ladder’ and ‘pipeline’.

Glass

A 170-line research poem featuring four sequences (ceiling, escalator, closet, cliff) voicing participants’ words drawn directly from transcripts, linked by four narrative sections featuring the voice of the researcher and commentator.

The Accidental Cartoonist

A 45-minute PowerPoint presentation providing an illustrated account of developing a graphic social science practice from experiments with doodles, sketches and cartoons to mapping as a research method and the more complex form of the graphic essay.

On The Page

A one-hour workshop inviting participants to experiment with using simple visual and graphic methods in their research and teaching.

My Brilliant Career? An Investigation

A graphic essay hand-drawn on four A2-sized panels. First exhibited in a large-scale comic format at BALTIC Gateshead, as part of the Sociological Review Conference Undisciplining: Conversations from the Edges, June 2018 and later in condensed form in an A1-sized academic poster.

I named the dissemination programme the g word tour, after my blog of the same name: the g word – that’s g for gender (Carruthers Thomas, 2019c). It was publicised via the national Athena SWAN JISCmail list, professional and personal networks, social media channels and word of mouth. Hosts were invited to select, mix and match options according to their needs and interests. Thanks to the internal funding previously mentioned, there was no charge. Bookings were brisk. Between November 2018 and July 2019, I delivered different elements of the g word on 30 separate occasions at 24 institutions including pre- and post-1992 universities and scientific research institutes in the UK and Republic of Ireland. Those hosting included equality, diversity and inclusion professionals, academics and academic developers, women’s networks and Athena SWAN teams. The tour reached a combined audience of over 800, including mixed academic and professional service staff groups, Athena SWAN Leads, women’s networks and mentoring groups, diversity and academic conferences, postgraduate researchers and undergraduate students. I delivered the programme elements as standalone events or in combination; the PowerPoint presentation: Workplace Glassed and Gendered and the participative workshop Mapping Career proved the most popular duo. On several occasions, elements were incorporated into an institution’s own events including seminar series, panels, conferences and International Women’s Day celebrations. Audience sizes varied widely: the smallest, 8, the largest, over 100. However, while diverse in terms of role, grade, age and ethnicity, audiences were predominantly female.

Where circumstances allowed, audience members were invited to complete a paper feedback form and to comment in person, via email or social media following the session. In total, 500 forms were completed throughout the tour, forming an album of snapshots of audience interactions and responses. The purpose of the form was not to establish ‘what worked’, nor to grade events as successful or otherwise, but to provide a space for the expression of particular positions at particular times and in gathering a myriad of views, to move towards an understanding of the potential of active dissemination. Individuals wrote of affective impact: of ‘goosebumps’ and ‘triggers’; about their surprise and pleasure at the use of creative media to present what some called a ‘dry’ or ‘boring’ subject. Audiences were often familiar with many of the experiences and issues discussed and appreciated the opportunity to consider these in new ways including working with colleagues in participative workshops, hearing about research through poetry or seeing it in cartoon form. Female audience members regularly commented on the low numbers of male staff and the most senior managers at the sessions and voiced frustration at the slow progress of gender equality. Several individuals made contact with me after the sessions, in person or via email. They did so to raise specific issues or to reflect at greater length on their own research or on personal experiences. These exchanges, in particular, moved my dissemination practice away from direct data transmission to a passive audience and towards multiple connections between researcher, data and audience. Audience feedback also constituted a significant element of my own reflective process described below.

Following each session, I recorded my experiences, observations and reflections in a dedicated journal. This was a cyclical process not dissimilar to action research models that emphasise a responsive, participative process (Kemmis et al., 2013). I deliberately wrote journal entries prior to reading the feedback forms in order to capture my reflections unmediated by audiences’ written opinions. Several journal entries included reflections on other forms of feedback such as moments of intense audience engagement, or in contrast, drops in audience attention and glazed eyes. The latter could indicate issues with timing or repetition – or simply a stuffy room. This resulted in some pragmatic responses; for example, it became apparent when facilitating the first Mapping Career workshop that the timetable allowed insufficient time for participants’ pairwork activity. Similarly, I discovered that participants in the On The Page workshop, needed more time to fully engage, reflect and feedback on the visual tasks that often took them out of their ‘academic’ comfort zone. I subsequently modified each workshop schedule. My journal also noted and reflected on questions and comments from audience members, recording the subsequent self-dialogue when this opened up new areas of discussion, challenged my interpretations and inspired ideas for further interrogation of the data. Throughout the course of the tour, the dissemination practice, the journal and the feedback forms became part of a ‘a spiral through which ideas . . . are incorporated, modified or adapted’ seeking to ‘encourage a view of dissemination as a reflexive and on-going conversation that one has with others as much as oneself’ (Barnes et al., 2003: 161).

Results: an alternative dynamics of dissemination?

The extended duration and geographical reach of the g word tour distinguish it from standard dissemination of research findings via conference papers or journal articles. The range of formats and media used to share findings is also untypical, allowing opportunities for researcher and audience to interact creatively and affectively in relation to the research findings. This positions dissemination as a fluid space in which a research enquiry continues to be under construction, rather than a formal conclusion of a research endeavour. Taking an active approach to dissemination, the g word tour therefore resulted not in closure through abstracted summary, but in a continuation of research momentum and insights, opening up spaces for dialogue, engagement and change. Through this practice and reflection over time, I also developed new insights into alternative dynamics of dissemination, identifying two distinct processes at work: contraflow and diffraction.

Contraflow

In contraflow, traffic travels in both directions on a shared carriageway. In the context of the g word tour, an increasing familiarity with my research material and practice occurred in tandem with the development of new insights and questions. Delivering 30 ‘gigs’ in a period of eight months meant I became intensely familiar with my research material and the methods used to share with others. This familiarity was facilitated not only by repetition, but also through incrementally adjusting and adapting; it was enhanced by the testing of my understanding, interpretations and assumptions by multiple audiences. I was required to ‘stay with the data’ for longer than is usual in a qualitative research project and to revisit it regularly to seek out different, more effective or contextually relevant examples for diverse audiences. I became attuned to patterns of audience responses. A large proportion of every audience identified with issues of gendered disadvantage raised in the data and might tell their own stories; others voiced frustration at the slow progress of gender equality in the workplace and society in general. On three separate occasions, male audience members criticised the lack of ‘good news stories’ in the research content. Audience members across multiple sites also regularly expressed a desire for concrete, singular solutions to complex issues. Occasionally individuals demanded analyses of data not collected or answers to questions the research had not set out to examine in the first place. The latter responses reminded me vividly of experiences on the conference platform. I also became more aware of strategies I habitually employ to manage audience responses; the extent to which I instinctively use humour to make audiences ‘feel’ comfortable’ and to cope with the awkwardness I feel when I don’t have ‘the answer’ some audience members seem to expect.

Audiences were rarely passive. They commented on the content and performance of Glass, critiqued the graphic essay, read respondents’ case studies aloud, worked in pairs to trace and describe their career trajectory, experimented with simple drawings and diagrams and questioned the research process and its findings. Bringing the data to diverse audiences, in diverse ways, energised and deepened my own engagement in the original research questions. I wrote in my journal: ‘Audience after audience grill me on my research rationale, process, findings, limitations and implications. Each time, their questions, comments and challenges push my analyses further and open new lines of enquiry’ (Carruthers Thomas, 2019a). As supplementary questions and ideas for further research evolved, it became easier to acknowledge and articulate the limitations of my research, for example, the over-representation of White female academic staff in the self-selecting sample. Through the dynamic of contraflow, the Gender(s) at Work research project continued to be a space of dialogue; space in Massey’s terms, always under construction (2005).

Diffraction

If the dynamic of contraflow challenges the normative assumption of dissemination as unidirectional, the dynamic of diffraction represents the potential for disruption leading to multiple understandings of data. In scientific terms, diffraction is the ‘process by which a beam of light or other systems of waves is spread out as a result of passing through a narrow aperture or across an edge, typically accompanied by interference between the wave forms produced’ (Oxford University Press, 2019). Applying a quantum understanding of the world to social sciences, Barad (1997, 2007) conceptualises diffraction as ‘both a physical phenomenon and generative concept that can further understandings in social studies’ (Dunk, 2019: 226). Barad proposes reading data diffractively rather than reflectively: ‘embracing diffraction as a mode of inquiry that involves reading insights through one another in attending to and responding to the details and specificities of relations of difference and how they matter’ (2007: 71). Reading the g word tour diffractively positions dissemination as an aperture through which data is revisualised, ie: transformed . . . into new multimodal creative outputs’ (Mannay, 2019: 659). Designing participation into the dissemination of data invites audiences to engage actively and affectively, challenging the notion of dissemination closing down the research process through the authoritative transmission of a singular truth. In the following paragraphs, I consider two dimensions of diffractive dissemination practice: entanglement and plurality.

The conventional practice of packaging research findings for dissemination, on the page or in person, is to tidy up and abstract what may have been messy research processes, smoothing over false starts, delays and challenges, giving an impression of linearity reaching a conclusion. The development of each element of the g word tour and the shaping of the programme as a whole, inevitably required me to select and shape data for audience consumption. However, it also involved disassembly, reconstruction and revisualisation of data across six programme elements, each combining content and media in specific ways. This was not ‘the presentation of research as ‘objective’ (which) . . . conceals the subject positions of researcher and the emotional imperatives that often drive research’ (Loughran and Mannay, 2018: 3). Rather, it was a process of ‘immersion in and entanglement with the minutiae of the data . . . a different kind of engagement . . . from the distanced contemplation of the table that is the arrested result of the process’ (McLure, 2013: 174–175). Poetry, artwork, story and mapping emerged from this ‘minutiae’, in turn, offering audiences opportunities to become immersed and entangled themselves. For example, individual participant narratives are voiced by audience volunteers during the PowerPoint presentation The Workplace Glassed and Gendered and in Mapping Career, workshop participants literally visualise the shaping of their own careers by opportunity, choice and inequality.

For Barad, entanglement requires a recognition of being within the world and part of it, rather than a ‘reflection of objects held at a distance’ (Barad, 2007: 89). Yet, ‘for the most part, when we present our research to audiences, we deliberately exclude the stories that suffuse that work with meaning’ (Loughran and Mannay, 2018: 2). Earlier in this article I wrote of my realisation that conventional dissemination methods would struggle to do justice to the complexity of the qualitative data I was collecting. However, by using discussion, mapping, reading aloud, listening and sketching, the g word tour involved others in the construction of a plurality of meanings. This disrupts not only assumptions of knowledge as a singular ‘truth’, but the feasibility of simplistic solutions to longstanding, structural inequalities writ large in the workplace. By opening up to and acknowledging plurality, a diffractive practice of dissemination can be generative. Plurality was also inherent in the roles I presented to different audiences. Depending on the nature of the event, I might be a storyteller, artist, poet or facilitator, each role mediating my academic identity. This hybridity made me vulnerable to questions of academic validity. After all, should a social sciences researcher talk in verse, represent theory through cartoons, use comics as a way of thinking, ask other academics to draw? I would argue that this is research practice which recognises ‘being within the world and part of it’, a quality implied in the words of an email I received from an audience member following a performance of Glass:

It is so refreshing and igniting to witness authenticity and a raw sort of truth that I don’t see much. Conventional delivery has me stressed to the hilt about whether it’s good enough, whether my slides are slick enough, is my meaning clear, is it theoretical enough? . . . I listened to some of the responses you gave after performing Glass and appreciated the honesty of them. There was a distinct authenticity in what you said. It was striking because it was without fear.

In giving full, open and authentic accounts of our research, in challenging presentation conventions, we create unexpected connections between researcher, data and audience . In doing so we model alternative ways of being ‘a researcher’ as well as alternative means of dissemination. The author of this email was a mature adult with a teaching career behind them, in search of their doctoral voice, but struggling to fit into to rigid conventions. As their email concluded: ‘Your performance has given me full permission to be me without too much filtering, editing and apology’.

Concluding remarks

Research dissemination is too often seen as the completion or closure of the academic research process. Instead, this article argues, it offers an opportunity to create new spaces for dialogue and potential change. The g word tour in which data from the Gender(s) at Work project is revisualised as a multimedia programme and delivered at multiple sites is an example. This active approach to dissemination took my research beyond an academic audience, opened it up to the construction of a plurality of meanings and sustained research momentum through audiences’ creative and affective entanglements with the data. The dissemination process required a repeated re-engagement with data, but from a multiplicity of angles, through disassembly, reconstruction and revisualization, combining content and media in specific ways. The g word tour has taught me an alternative dynamics of dissemination: a contraflow of familiarity and new knowledge, and diffraction, the expansion of knowledge and understanding through entanglement and plurality.

The tour was created in and benefited from, particular circumstances, including my own practices as poet and cartoonist and the small-scale funding which facilitated multiple face-to-face engagements over an extended period. However, it is possible for qualitative researchers in different circumstances to apply the principles of an active approach to dissemination on a smaller, simpler scale by designing participation into the dissemination of data; by combining different media and genres. For example:

ask audience volunteers to read aloud short extracts from interview or case study data as part of a standard PowerPoint presentation (as in The Workplace Glassed and Gendered). Introducing a performative element and different voices enlivens data and disrupts a sense of authoritative transmission;

invite audiences to work with the data eg:

through generating images, maps or models, individually, in pairs (as in Mapping Career), or in small groups, then sharing the materials produced to facilitate further discussion of themes and questions,

by discussing how the research could be applied locally, eg: an action set, a manifesto, further investigation;

draw on a wider set of references (literary/visual/media etc) to introduce, illustrate or reflect on your data. I found beginning and ending an otherwise conventional PowerPoint presentation of research methods and findings disrupted expectations and challenged mindsets.

The g word tour officially concluded in July 2019 but its legacy, of which this article is part, is a continuing practice of revisualising social sciences data for wider engagement. Glass is published online (Carruthers Thomas, 2019d) and has since been extended to include a sequence on academic precarity. I have completed three further graphic social science commissions for others’ academic projects and was the poet in residence at an annual academic conference. Each of these celebrate multiple connections between researcher, data and audience and further the creative potential of research dissemination.

Footnotes

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Kate Carruthers Thomas

Notes

Author biography

Kate Carruthers Thomas is a Senior Research Fellow and Athena SWAN Project Manager at Birmingham City University, UK. She specialises in interdisciplinary enquiry into contemporary higher education, inequalities and gender and has a particular interest in spatial methods and analyses. Kate uses both poetry and graphics as methods of disseminating her research in these fields.

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