Introduction

This New Voices forum collates a selection of papers from the Practice Makes Perfect symposium held at Swansea Metropolitan University, 6 and 7 September, 2012. The event brought together post-graduate, post-doctoral and independent researchers to present and debate issues of methodology within the field of visual research. The symposium was designed to facilitate dialogues and explore the manner in which artists and designers articulate and theorise methodologies in ways that are comprehensible and recognisable to other members of the academy.

The following papers represent the growing confidence of new researchers working with visual research. The symposium discussion groups concluded that it is unlikely that a new research paradigm can be developed for visual research as a whole, this being inappropriate to the uniquely diverse nature of visual research methods. Instead these papers demonstrate the variety of newly formulated methodologies within the field, characterised by their use of hybridisation and sophisticated theorisation of subjectivity. If we cannot, and should not, formulate a new generalised research paradigm for visual research, it is pertinent that this variety of innovative and appropriate methodological approaches is shared with, and developed by, both emerging researchers and the established cross-disciplinary research community.