Creative research methodologies in critical military studies

Abstract

This paper discusses the use of creative research methods in critical military studies. This article centres creative research practices in methodological terms and engages with the implications of the use of creative research methodologies for the politics of research practice in military and related contexts. The utility of creative research methodologies in social science contexts is discussed, noting the growth of methods that produce research data through active generative practices and their epistemological framing through post-phenomenological thought. The paper then considers the critical military studies contexts for these methodologies, identifying their utility and the challenges they pose. Military engagements with creative practices and creative research methodologies are identified and discussed. The paper then examines in more detail, with reference to empirical examples, four features of creative methodologies: that they are about doing; the role of experimentation; issues of collaboration; and questions of public engagement. The paper concludes with a discussion of the politics of creative research methods in critical military studies, including questions of military utilization of creativity and questions of creative practice as labour, and considers whether there is a specificity to the use of creative methods in military and related contexts.