Diffractive Debriefing: A Different Approach to Participant Debriefing

Introduction

Participant debriefing is a common practice in qualitative research. As Sieber (2004, p. 240) explains, it generally involves ‘a conversation between investigator and subject that occurs after the research session’ that acts as an opportunity for participants and researchers to discuss what happened in research events (e.g. interviews or observations). Such a practice can be utilised to achieve different aims in qualitative research. For instance, Aluwihare-Samaranayake (2012) posits that participant debriefing is a method for mitigating potential harms that research presents to participants. Sieber (2004, p. 240) also suggests it is an opportunity ‘for the investigator to thank the subject for participating, more fully explain the research, and discuss the subjects’ perception of the research experience.’ Flick (2014) and Lincoln and Guba (1985) go further and present participant debriefing as a way to improve the validity of qualitative research findings by checking whether participants agree with researchers’ interpretations of their behaviours, experiences or memories. Despite helping researchers to achieve different aims, participant debriefing methods are commonly underpinned by the assumption that researchers and/or participants can critically examine research events (Sieber, 2004). In other words, participant debriefing is underpinned by the philosophical assumption that humans can stand back from research events and reflect on them.

The philosophical assumptions underpinning reflection, and thereby participant debriefing, have been criticised by feminist relational materialist philosophers (Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017). Here I refer to feminist relational materialism as a family of theories that assume that reality is constructed through the relationality of human subjects and non-human objects. In doing so, feminist relational materialists criticise the famous Cartesian assumption (Murris, 2016) that knowledge of an inert outside world can be gathered on the inside of the human subject who can then use their knowledge to manipulate or act on the world (Braidotti, 2022). Instead, feminist relational materialists assume that the human subject is ‘embodied and embedded’ in the world (Braidotti, 2022, p. 6). As such, feminist relational materialists criticise the idea that human subjects can ‘step back’ and reflect on the world ‘at a distance’ (Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010, p. 536).

Feminist relational materialism thereby has implications for how research methods like participant debriefing are understood. As Murris (2021) explains, if human subjects cannot observe or reflect on an external reality, then methods are not tools to help humans understand or represent a fixed reality. Rather, for feminist relational materialists, methods help to construct reality.

Davies (2020) suggests that such a view means that there is an ethical obligation for researchers adopting a feminist relational materialist approach to consider how their methods make a difference in the world (i.e. how they help to construct/reconstruct reality). St Pierre (2021) and Murris (2021) have presented post-qualitative research as a methodological approach that involves such considerations. Post-qualitative research ‘proposes philosophy or concept as method’ (Murris, 2021, p. 3) and involves working with philosophical concepts to reimagine the world or create new realities.

One philosophical concept that post-qualitative researchers have proposed as a method is feminist relational materialist philosopher Karen Barad’s concept of diffraction (Dunk, 2020). For Barad (2007), diffraction is situated within what they call an agential realist ontology which foregrounds the assumption that phenomena (e.g. a human, an object) come into being through their relationality or ‘intra-action.’ As part of such a relational ontology, diffraction is a concept Barad uses to argue that making difference in the world is a relational practice.

Haraway (1992) originally proposed diffraction as an optical metaphor for how different people and/or non-human things can make difference in the world together. In doing so, Haraway (1997) drew on the notion of diffraction in physics which involves the bending and spreading of waves when they encounter a barrier or an opening. She suggested that just like waves cross over with one another to become different in themselves and make a diffraction pattern, making interference or difference in the world involves the relationality of different people and/or non-humans.

Barad (2007) builds on Haraway’s (1992) notion and suggests that diffraction is not just a metaphor but is itself the method of making difference in the world. To do so, Barad (2007) draws on the work of Niels Bohr and his contribution to quantum physics. Bohr found that when electrons (understood as ‘tiny particles of matter’ Barad (2007, p. 102)) are fired through a diffraction grating (two slits in a partition), they produce the diffraction pattern characteristic of a wave, and thereby do not perform as a particle (Barad, 2007). This led Bohr to suggest that the act of observing something affects how it performs, meaning that an observer and the thing being observed become ‘inextricably entangled’ (Fox & Alldred, 2023, p. 96). According to Barad (2007), Bohr argued that an electron can perform as both a particle and a wave and that, at a quantum level, the way electrons are observed affects how they perform. Barad (2007) draws on Bohr’s work and Haraway’s (1992) notion of diffraction to posit that in the social world when a human utilises a non-human tool to observe something, diffraction happens. As such, Barad (2007) suggests that through relationality with one another, the thing being observed as well as the human and non-human tool doing the observation diffract or become different in themselves to create new realities.

In this paper, I position diffraction as a participant debriefing method and, in doing so, present an innovative post-qualitative application of diffraction.

Diffractive Debriefing: an Innovative Approach to Participant Debriefing

Inspired by how some post-qualitative researchers have worked with diffraction as a form of activist research (Strom et al., 2019), in this paper I present diffraction as an innovative participant debriefing method that can contribute to social change. In doing so, I suggest that unlike participant debriefing, diffractive debriefing approaches do not involve participants and researchers reflecting on a completed research project that is external to them. Rather, I suggest that in diffractive debriefing, research projects diffract with participants, researchers and other humans and non-humans to become something different. To clarify, I posit that diffractive debriefing is a method that involves creating new possibilities for research projects.

I argue that by foregrounding the production of new possibilities for research projects, diffractive debriefing marks a break from participant debriefing. Even so, I suggest that there are continuities between traditional and diffractive approaches to participant debriefing. This is because as ways of doing participant debriefing, both approaches involve considerations of past research events. However, unlike participant debriefing (Flick, 2014), I suggest that in diffractive debriefing the purpose of considering what happened in a research project is not to inform participants about what a researcher found out or to collect participants’ interpretations of the project. Rather, I argue that in diffractive approaches to debriefing, the act of considering what happened in a research project diffracts with the project to create new possibilities for the project. To put it another way, a diffractive approach to participant debriefing involves considering what happened in past research project events as a way of helping the project to become something different.

Diffractive Debriefing in a Post-Qualitative Research Project

In this paper, I consider diffraction as a debriefing method in the context of my research with 21 young people aged 15 years old from two schools in the Southwest of England. The research project considered what young people’s menstruation stories do and how they could make a difference in education in England. It involved five workshops which focused on participants telling stories about menstruation in their everyday lives. Each workshop lasted between 1-1.5 hours and took place in the schools that participants attended.

The pseudonymised names of participants’ schools, as well as participants’ pseudonyms ¹ and the details they provided about their age, ethnicity, gender and preferred pronouns are included in Table 1 below.

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Table 1.

Details of Participants.

Name 2	School	Age	Ethnicity	Gender
Sally	Summerhill High	15 years old	White British	Girl (she)
Angela period Silton	Summerhill High	15 years old	Polish white	Cis female (she)
Navia Silton	Summerhill High	15 years old	British white	Girl (she)
Alfie	Summerhill High	15 years old	White Welsh	Male (he)
Shaniquia	Summerhill High	15 years old	Middle Eastern	Girl (she)
Rebecca (Beckie) Sylvestone	Summerhill High	15 years old	European (white)	Non-binary (she/they)
Charlie Pireclos	Summerhill High	15 years old	White British	Transgender male (he)
Bilzarian	Summerhill High	15 years old	Scottish/British	Transgender (m + f) (he/they)
Dexter	Summerhill High	15 years old	White British	Genderqueer (she/they)
Orange	Greenway Academy	15 years old	Kurdish	Boy (he)
Yellow	Greenway Academy	15 years old	South Asian	Boy (he)
Margot	Greenway Academy	15 years old	British	Girl (she)
Purple	Greenway Academy	15 years old	Black British	Boy (he)
Indigo	Greenway Academy	15 years old	White	Boy (he)
Ironman	Greenway Academy	15 years old	White British	Transgender boy (he)
Auberie Johnson	Greenway Academy	15 years old	Mixed (Black Ghanaian and White Polish)	Girl (she)
Pink	Greenway Academy	15 years old	White European	Girl (she)
Blue	Greenway Academy	15 years old	White Asian	Girl (she)
Red	Greenway Academy	15 years old	White	Girl? (she)
Robin	Greenway Academy	15 years old	Spanish Pakistani	Girl (she)
Batman	Greenway Academy	15 years old	Black Caribbean, West Indian	Gender fluid (she/they)

All participants provided informed consent to take part in the workshops and the project received ethical approval from the School for Policy Studies Research Ethics Committee at the University of Bristol. My approach to participant consent was inspired by Barad’s (2007) argument that the ability to decide is not self-willed and possessed but emerges through the relationality of humans and non-humans. In other words, I assumed that people (of any age) are not inherently capable or incapable of consenting to take part in research but that their capacity to do so is dependent on their relationality with other humans and non-humans. As such, I provided participants with information about the project, discussed it with them and provided opportunities for them to ask questions to help them to make an informed choice about taking part. I also made parent information sheets available for participants to give to their parents if they wanted to.

All other elements of the project were also underpinned by feminist relational materialist philosophy but particularly the argument, evident in the work of Barad (2007), that constructing reality or making a difference in the world is a relational practice. As such, I understood all the methods that I employed in the project as phenomena that could help to make a difference in the world through relationality with other humans and non-humans, including me and participants.

The five workshops that participants took part in involved different methods, including object interviews (Woodward, 2020) and focus groups. As part of object interviews, participants brought in objects to help them tell stories about how menstruation is part of their everyday lives. Other participants and I then asked participants unstructured questions about their objects and their stories. I employed this method because it presented opportunities for different human participants and non-human objects to interact (Woodward, 2020) and create or disrupt menstruation stories together. In focus groups, participants responded to statements I prepared about menstruation stories and schooling in England. Some participants responded verbally, and some responded by writing notes or drawing. I understood such focus groups as presenting opportunities for participants, their menstruation stories, and the statements I prepared to make a difference in the world, together. In other words, I assumed that through their relationality, young people’s stories and the statements could diffract or change in themselves to produce new menstruation stories and/or ways of understanding menstruation in English schooling.

The final workshops in each school focused on debriefing. I planned for the final sessions to involve me and participants reflecting on the stories told and discussed in the earlier workshops. Similar to how Aluwihare-Samaranayake (2012) and Sieber (2004) discuss the benefits of participant debriefing, I had understood such a reflective approach as offering a way to bring the project to a close and give participants the opportunity to ask questions about the research. However, inspired by Barad’s (2007) argument that human subjects cannot stand back and reflect on an external reality, I changed my approach. Barad’s (2007) argument led me to consider how participant debriefing could make a difference in the world or help to create new realities. In doing so, I started to wonder how the act of debriefing participants about a research project could diffract with such a research project and lead to it becoming different. Such considerations led me to develop a diffractive approach to debriefing. My approach involved me and participants working with pens and paper to produce maps of stories/events from the previous research project workshops. Such maps then contributed to discussions and debates about what the research project could become once I stopped working directly with participants.

Below I draw on such maps and the discussions and debates that emerged in the diffractive debriefing workshops to describe three key principles I worked with when developing my diffractive approach to participant debriefing.

Key Principles of Diffractive Debriefing

Principle #1: Researchers Should Avoid Instructing Participants About what Happened in a Project

When developing my diffractive approach to participant debriefing, I worked with the principle that, unlike in traditional participant debriefing (Sieber, 2004), researchers should avoid instructing participants about what they think happened in a research project.

In my debriefing workshops with young people in Summerhill High and Greenway Academy, I did not instruct participants about my interpretations of their menstruation stories and events from the previous research workshops. Instead, I invited participants in each school to work with me and pens and paper to create a ‘project map’ of stories and events from the previous project workshops. The process involved me and the pupils in each school sitting around a table and writing notes on a large piece of paper. Sometimes pupils wrote on post-it notes and stuck their notes to the paper. Sometimes pupils and I also stuck down images that I had printed onto paper. Through such a process young people and I, as well as the non-human pens and paper we worked with, helped to produce maps of different events and stories from the project (see Figures 1 and 2).OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Project map from Greenway Academy.

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Figure 2.

Project map from Summerhill High.

Such an approach was inspired by Barad’s concept of diffraction and particularly the way it troubles the idea that researchers can generate knowledge about what happened in a research project and pass it onto participants. To clarify, diffraction is situated within Barad’s (2007) agential realist ontology which rejects the idea that thinking subjects (e.g. a researcher) are different from inert objects (e.g. a research project) and can thereby study and produce knowledge about them.

Furthermore, Barad’s (2007) understanding of diffraction troubles the notion that researchers are knowledge-holding agents whilst participants are not. This is because in suggesting that phenomena (e.g. researcher, participant, object, research project) become different in themselves through their relationality, Barad’s (2007) framing of diffraction implies that nothing has inherent properties or boundaries. In other words, according to Barad (2007) diffraction does not involve pre-existing bounded things interacting in a linear way. Rather as Lenz Taguchi (2010, 44, my emphasis) explains, where different things diffract or interfere/overlap, they ‘change in themselves in intra-action’ (i.e. they come into being together). Following such a line of thinking, researchers and participants are not bounded things with inherently different properties, but rather come into being through their relationality with each other and/or other human and non-human phenomena. In this way, Barad’s (2007) notion of diffraction also implies that agency (i.e. the ability to make a difference in the world) and knowledge are not attributes inherent to a researcher. Instead, Barad’s diffraction implies that researchers, participants, other humans and non-humans can be agentic and help produce knowledge/reality, but only through their diffractive relationality.

As such, the production of maps in my diffractive debriefing workshops with young people can be understood as diffractive practice. Rather than assuming that I could instruct participants about my interpretations of the project by creating a written representation of them like researchers sometimes do in traditional participant debriefing (Erdmann & Potthoff, 2023), different phenomena (e.g. me, participants, pens, paper) helped to produce the maps together. In doing so, the different phenomena appeared to diffract as per Barad’s (2007) understanding of the practice. In other words, phenomena that contributed to the maps appeared to become different in themselves through their relationality and thereby create new realities. As an example, when participants and I worked with our memories, pens and paper to write notes, the project maps came into being and we all became co-producers of the maps. In other words, the ontologies of the maps and the phenomena they involved (i.e. what such things were), became mutually dependent.

Principle #3: Diffractive Debriefing Involves an Approach to Ethics that Foregrounds Response-Ability

Barad (2007) argues that such an understanding of diffraction has implications for research ethics (i.e. how research and researchers make difference in the world). In arguing that diffraction is a relational practice and that researchers diffract with the humans and non-humans they study, Barad (2007) posits that researchers are not distinct from the phenomena they research. Instead, they suggest that researchers and the things they study become different in themselves or come into being, through their relationality (Barad, 2007). Building on this, Barad (2007, x) argues that researchers have an ethical obligation to welcome the response of the phenomena they study as a way of bringing about ‘ever new possibilities for living justly.’ To clarify, Barad (in Kleinman, 2012) argues that if researchers are not objective onlookers but instead help the phenomena that they study to become different, then researchers should consider how they help such phenomena to become different and thereby what kinds of realities they help to produce. For Barad (in Kleinman, 2012) researchers responding to the needs and/or interests of the human and non-human phenomena they research is a just way of creating difference in the world and thereby an ethical obligation (Bozalek, 2020).

Barad (in Kleinman, 2012) refers to such an ethical obligation as ‘response-ability’. They caution that response-ability is ‘not about the right response, but rather a matter of inviting, welcoming, and enabling the response of the Other’ (Barad in Kleinman, 2012, 81). In other words, Barad suggests that response-able research does not involve researchers adhering to a pre-determined list of rules about ethics. Rather, as Bozalek (2020, p. 143) explains, response-ability involves responding to the ‘interests and needs’ of other humans and non-humans as they emerge or come into being.

Inspired by such arguments, when developing my diffractive approach to participant debriefing I worked with the principle that diffractive debriefing involves an approach to ethics that foregrounds response-ability. Such a principle particularly affected the way that I worked with participants and responded to their requests and suggestions. In Greenway Academy three participants verbally suggested speaking with Ms Green (a senior teacher in the school who had helped me to organise the workshops) about the research project becoming various school-based initiatives. Such a suggestion emerged four times in the debriefing workshop. Whilst only three participants verbally suggested that they could speak with Ms Green, other participants nodded when they heard such a suggestion and no participants verbally disagreed. The following discussion involving me, Pink, Blue, Robin and Batman is an example of such a suggestion emerging. The discussion involved me asking all young people to explain how they had been considering what the research project could become in groups:

Kate: What would you do with a poster?

Blue: Like raise awareness and kind of normalise periods and like just make people feel less alone.

Kate: Is there anyone that you can talk to about making that happen?

Batman: Probably Ms Green.

Pink: Yeah. Probably.

Blue: I mean (nodding).

Kate: What about this group. Were there any ideas that you’ve heard already that you also spoke about?

Robin: Um. The poster one. A different one we thought of that they didn’t thought of was. What was it again? Oh yeah like putting pads in like every room, rather than just keeping them in the toilet.

Kate: OK. Every classroom?

Robin: yeah. And like everywhere overall.

Kate: OK.

Robin: Like in the staff room.

Kate: OK. And is there anyone you could speak to about that as well?

Robin: Probably Ms Green as well.

Researchers utilising traditional approaches to participant debriefing often report and reflect on what participants say during debriefing encounters (Flick, 2014; Sieber, 2004). Such reporting and reflection generally happen after debriefing events (Flick, 2014). Inspired by the notion of response-ability (Barad, 2007), I took an alternative approach and responded to participants’ suggestion as it emerged. Minutes after the discussion above, Ms Green entered the room, and I verbally invited all participants to discuss what the project could become with her if they wanted to:

Kate: (sitting down at large table with participants) I know you’ve got loads and loads of ideas and Ms Green’s come back. So if there’s anything you want to share with her, you can do that now.

Batman: Everything on this list (stands up and hands paper list of project potentialities that Batman had written [see Figure 3] to Ms Green whilst listening to all other participants discuss what the project could become).

Ms Green: (Holds paper list in her hands and looks at it whilst standing in front of participants and Kate) See where it says (points at list) make a form would that be a survey type thing?

Batman: That says make a film.

Ms Green: Oh sorry. Posters. So would you design the posters yourself and then? (holding paper list in front of her but looking up at participants).

Batman: So what we’re tryna do is we’re tyna get people to like gravitate towards the poster.

Ms Green: And then like as a whole group do that? (points towards participants) So Batman’s saying to gravitate more to the posters so would you as a group design the posters and then we can get them like printed and laminated. Do you want them put in the toilets or around the building?

Orange: Around the building (swinging on chair).

Ms Green: Around the building.

Red: Everywhere.

Teacher: OK. So. That would be. (Looks down at paper list).

Orange: No one’s gonna see it in the toilet.

Ms Green: No, but at least the information is there. Do you know what I think would be good (pointing at the list) as well cos you’ve got uh the Year 6s coming up in Year 7, maybe like you could incorporate some of this and do like a talk with them as well.

Pink: Yeah, we were talking about like going to a primary school (smiling at Ms Green, nodding).

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Figure 3.

Paper list of what the project could become.

Although it was Batman, Robin and Pink who had verbally suggested talking with Ms Green about the project, I invited all participants to speak with her. I did not check whether all participants wanted to speak with Ms Green before I invited them to do so and thereby may have surprised them. However, in suggesting ‘if there’s anything you want to share with her, you can do that now’, I hoped to welcome, rather than demand all participants’ responses.

Such an approach was underpinned by Barad’s (in Kleinman, 2012) notion of response-ability which they frame as a way to disrupt exclusions. Barad (2007) uses the term ‘agential cuts’ to describe boundary and exclusion making practices. Barad (2007) suggests that no phenomena have pre-existing qualities, meaning that nothing is inherently excluded or marginalised. Rather they suggest that exclusions and boundaries emerge through the relationality and diffraction of different phenomena. As such, Barad (2007) argues that exclusions are not inevitable or fixed and that response-ability or inviting and welcoming the response of excluded ‘others’ can disrupt and avoid particular exclusions or agential cuts (Barad in Kleinman, 2012). Drawing on such an argument, I suggest inviting all participants to speak with Ms Green (and not just the participants who verbally expressed that they wanted to) helped to avoid excluding some participants from the creation of possible becomings for the research project. This is because such an approach appeared to enable different participants to help create new project realities with Ms Green, rather than only participants who had suggested speaking with her. For example, in response to my invitation, Orange, Red and Batman discussed the project becoming a poster campaign with Ms Green who was holding and reading a paper list that Batman had written which included the word ‘posters’. As part of the discussion, Orange and Red emphasised that posters should be displayed ‘everywhere’ and ‘around the building.’ Orange also suggested that the posters should not be displayed in the toilets because ‘no one’s gonna see them.’ In this way, Orange and Red became co-creators of a possible poster campaign alongside the paper list that Batman had written and Batman who had originally suggested speaking with Ms Green.

In a similar way, the response-able act of inviting all participants to speak with Ms Green seemed to help prevent Ms Green from becoming excluded from the creation of possible research project futures. For example, Ms Green became a co-producer of a possible menstruation talk with younger pupils when she picked up the paper list, suggested that the project could become a talk with Year Six and Seven pupils and Pink responded, ‘we were like talking about going to a primary school.’

Building on this, I suggest that response-ability is not only a way to disrupt exclusions and boundaries in diffractive debriefing. Rather, response-ability or inviting the response of the Other has implications for all aspects of diffractive debriefing. Barad (2007) argues that research ethics (i.e. the way researchers/research makes difference in the world) cannot be separated from epistemology (knowledge) and ontology (reality). Adopting the same position, I suggest that inviting the response of the Other in diffractive debriefing affects the way projects diffract (i.e. become different) and thereby the knowledges/realities that diffractive debriefing helps to produce.

Discussion: Diffractive Debriefing Beyond My Project with Young People

Having described the principles that shaped my diffractive approach to participant debriefing in a research project that focused on young people telling menstruation stories, below I consider how the method could be part of other research projects.

In doing so, I suggest that diffractive debriefing could be part of other post-qualitative research projects. This is because like all post-qualitative research (Murris, 2021), a diffractive approach to participant debriefing is a relational practice that involves humans and non-humans creating difference or change together. To clarify diffractive debriefing involves participants, researchers and non-humans contributing to research projects becoming different in themselves and, in this way, the method involves changing reality. In other words, it involves the ontology of a research project (i.e. what a project is) becoming different through its diffractive relationality with researchers, participants and/or non-humans. This is like how all post-qualitative research (Murris, 2021) helps to change reality alongside different human and non-human phenomena. As such, I suggest that diffractive debriefing could complement different post-qualitative projects. However, because a diffractive approach to participant debriefing involves participants contributing to research projects becoming different, I posit that the method will particularly complement post-qualitative projects that involve participants.

As diffractive debriefing involves participants helping to bring about changes in research projects, the method appears to share similarities with participatory action research (PAR) approaches. This is because PAR involves participants collaborating with researchers to change things (Benjamin-Thomas, Corrado, McGrath, Rudman, & Hand, 2018). However, diffractive debriefing marks a break from PAR in significant ways. As Taylor et al. (2020) explain, PAR focuses on human researchers and participants acting on the world to change it. Diffractive debriefing, however, involves researchers, participants and non-humans contributing to changes in research projects through the relational practice of diffraction. In this way, diffractive debriefing troubles what Taylor et al. (2020, p. 171) call the human-focused ‘ontological locus of agency’ in PAR. In other words, whilst PAR appears to position humans as actors who possess agency, diffractive debriefing involves humans and non-humans helping to bring about changes through their relationality. In this way, whilst diffractive debriefing might complement some aspects of PAR, the method appears to present a different way for research to help create change in the world. To clarify, diffractive debriefing may complement PAR projects and the way they disrupt the assumption that researchers are agents and participants are not (Zuber-Skerritt, 2018). This is because diffractive debriefing involves participants and researchers helping to create changes in research projects together. However, diffractive debriefing does not foreground humans acting on the world like PAR approaches (Taylor et al., 2020) generally do. This is because diffractive debriefing involves research projects diffracting or becoming different with human researchers and participants, but also non-humans.

By involving research projects becoming different in themselves through diffracting with human and non-human phenomena, diffractive debriefing appears to present a way to do impact work in academic research projects. In academia, research impact is generally understood as the changes research brings about in the world beyond academia (Sliwa and Kellard, 2022). Academic research impact is also generally framed as a measurable output (Tuhiwai Smith, 2018). For example, in the UK the impact of research is assessed by scoring outputs of academic research (e.g. book sales, policy changes) against the Research Excellence Framework (Silwa and Kellard, 2022). As such, whilst diffractive debriefing and common approaches to research impact involve changing things, diffractive debriefing appears to trouble common approaches to research impact. This is because unlike common approaches to research impact (Taylor et al., 2020), diffractive debriefing does not involve producing fixed and measurable outputs. Rather, the method involves research projects becoming different- and continuing to become different- in a multiplicity of unpredictable ways. As such, diffractive debriefing appears to offer an alternative way for research to help make difference in the world.

In providing such an alternative approach to research impact work, diffractive debriefing seems to present affordances. This is because the method appears to address problems with common approaches to academic research impact that some scholars have highlighted. Tuhiwai Smith (2018) and Brown (2015) have argued that because research impact frameworks (e.g. the REF in the UK) focus on measuring and comparing research outputs, they only value a limited range of knowledges and outputs, such as study findings that contribute to the ‘capital enhancement’ (Brown, 2015, p. 177) of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Taylor et al. (2020) argue that in doing this, common notions of academic research impact contribute to a ‘knowledge hierarchy’ which means that they are, ‘thoroughly enmeshed within…colonialist presumptions about which knowledge matters’ (Taylor et al., 2020, p. 174). In other words, Taylor et al. (2020) suggest that because common approaches to academic research impact often focus on the production of measurable and comparable research outputs, they contribute to the idea that some types of knowledge are more impactful or valuable than others. Taylor et al. (2020) also suggest that by focusing on the production of quantifiable outputs, common approaches to academic research impact overlook the way that research can contribute to changes in the world in experimental, happenstance and immeasurable ways.

As diffractive debriefing involves research projects changing in creative and unpredictable ways, the method appears to present a way of disrupting what Taylor et al. (2020, p. 173) call the neo-liberal ‘input-output transmission belt’ in academic research. In other words, because diffractive debriefing focuses on research projects becoming different in a multiplicity of creative ways, the method appears to trouble the idea that research leads to fixed outputs that can be measured, valued and compared.

How This Article Could Contribute to Participant Debriefing Approaches

In this article, I have presented diffractive debriefing as a post-qualitative method that involves research projects becoming different in a multiplicity of creative ways. As such, it does not seem appropriate to conclude this article by suggesting that the article itself simply represents diffractive debriefing and how I used the method. Barad (2007) argues that research (and thereby research articles) helps to create reality through diffracting with other human and non-human phenomena. Adopting the same position, I suggest that this article can be understood as something that could contribute to creating a multiplicity of different participant debriefing approaches, but only through relationality with different humans (e.g. researchers, participants) and non-humans (e.g. research projects).