I have written four previous posts on this topic, with different examples of creative theses and dissertations. Here are the first, second, third, and fourth of those posts.

Today I am showcasing: a thesis written in two different styles throughout; another which takes a multi-media approach; and a third which has been self-published as an open access comic. As a bonus, I will share a creative recording of a doctoral dissertation and its defence.

The thesis written in two different styles is by Anne Collis whose doctorate was in social policy and inclusion, with a focus on how to include people with learning disabilities in policy-making in Wales. Anne’s thesis is written in a reasonably conventional way, except that she also writes an ‘Alongsider Thesis’. This is a plain English version which is presented in the PDF of the thesis alongside the academic version. Close to the start of the Alongsider Thesis, Anne says:

“This thesis has two versions alongside each other.

• The right hand pages are written in Academic language.
• The left hand pages are written in Everyday language.

You can read just the Everyday pages to get an idea of what is in the thesis. You can start with the Everyday pages and then look across to get more details any time you want.

If you read Academic, you can read just the Academic pages. You can use the Everyday pages to make it quicker to read any parts of the thesis you aren’t so interested in. I hope some academics will get ideas by looking at the Everyday pages for ways they can try to share what they know.”

As Anne’s thesis is all about inclusivity, this creative approach makes perfect sense.

The multi-media thesis is by Elona Hoover whose doctorate was in Human Geography with a focus on urban ‘commoning projects’ in London and Paris. Elona is a musician; she plays the cello. Her thesis includes an experimentally written document, punctuated by five ‘samples’ and accompanied by a soundtrack. The written document uses a variety of fonts for different purposes: one for an ethnographic narrative, another for text taken directly from fieldnotes, a third for excerpts from documents, a fourth for quotes from interviews, and a fifth for notes for the reader, among others. The ‘samples’ are audio samples: sampling is a compositional technique that can be ironic, inclusive, and playful, among other things. And the soundtrack includes material from field recordings, Elona’s cello, people reading poems, and the sounds of turning on and off the microphone. In the PDF of the thesis, the soundtrack and samples are embedded audio files. There are invitations to the reader with each audio file, either to stop reading while listening or to listen while continuing to read. The author uses this multifaceted approach to reflect the complexity of communing with all its interpersonal, political, and conceptual interactions.

The thesis which was self-published as a comic is by Omar Bah, which is a pseudonym. The author is an African anthropologist who studied international development with a focus on expatriate aid workers who are known in some African languages as Mzungus. Omar’s PhD ‘tells stories of Mzungus and goals that were never reached’ and apparently no academic journal agreed to publish any part of it (Omar, if you’re reading this, please try the new Journal of Creative Research Methods). So Omar decided to self-publish his thesis – as an online comic, in two parts: first and second. It is a great read: insightful, uncomfortable, educational, funny, and worth the investment of time.

Vanessa Santos did a PhD in tourism with a focus on sustainability. She produced a video called ‘My Doctoral Viva’ which presents her doctoral dissertation through autoethnotheatre. In the associated text she describes her research as advocating “for context-sensitive, adaptive, experimental policymaking that balances economic growth with social sustainability, emphasizing a human-centered approach to tourism development”. The video is compelling to watch, and I’m delighted that Vanessa is coming to this year’s International Creative Research Methods Conference to present and discuss her work.

We know from social media that the immediate impact of the International Creative Research Methods Conference is always very positive. You can see some recent examples on the website (scroll down) with links to their sources for verification. But now that the conference is in its fourth year, we are beginning to see some of the longer-term impacts.

At our first conference, in 2023, academic Heather Bullen met artist Jean McEwan and they generated an idea for a collaborative zine-making project for women asylum seekers and refugees in Liverpool. They got funding from Research England via the University of Liverpool. Through local charity Asylum Link Merseyside (ALM), they gathered a group of women, focused on them as artists, and helped them to use their artwork to build resilience. ALM launched the zine on 27 June 2024 and it was reported in the Liverpool Echo.

Independent researchers Rowena Hay and Fran Harkness met at the second conference in 2024. That autumn they set up the Mighty Mini Research Collective, a peer support group for independent researchers which is going from strength to strength. They have an active group on LinkedIn with 200 members, and this year they are holding their first event, an unconference in Stockport, Manchester, on 16 June 2026. All independent researchers are welcome and tickets are available until 5 June.

Our third conference in 2025 was attended by Anita Barrand who is a Community Engagement Officer in the Centre for Ethnic Health Research at the University of Leicester. Although she is based in a university centre, Anita is not an academic herself, she is a creative professional and a researcher. She told me that the conference inspired ideas for her work on a study investigating ways to empower care home and home care staff through research. This study is part of the National Institutes for Health Research Applied Research Collaboration in the East Midlands. Anita’s study is called Living Labs for Care (LiLaC) and has tested creative research methods in two care homes. Fabric printmaking was used with international care home staff, and cultural food and recipes were used with staff at an Asian-led care home, to explain the stages of research. These creative methods helped to connect a diverse group of people with the research process.

The Binks Hub is a network of academics, community members, artists and policy-makers, based at the University of Edinburgh, who use creativity and the arts to co-create research for social change. In 2024 The Binks Hub was a sponsor of ICRMC, and several of their members attended the conference: Jimmy Turner (Binks Hub Research Fellow), artist and doctoral student Rhiannon Bull, comedian and writer Susan Morrison, and artist Jean McEwan (who we have already met earlier in this post). They ran a workshop to share some working drafts of a book they were creating: A Field Guide to Artist-Researcher Collaborations. That book was published open access in March 2026 and I cannot recommend it highly enough. There is also a booklet of activities you can download. Jimmy told me,

“The opportunity to workshop some work-in-progress material for our book at the 2024 International Creative Research Methods Conference was invaluable. We had just completed the workshops we had run with the artists who would become our co-authors, so for the conference workshop we drafted up some plans of chapters and creative activities to share with our participants. Sharing at a conference like this, which brings together experienced creative methods researchers, artists, and folk who were taking their first steps into creative methods research, meant we were able to identify any gaps and assess whether the approach we were developing would be helpful.”

Then of course there is the Journal of Creative Research Methods. Sadly this is not fully open access at present, as the publisher has not yet been able to secure funding for that, but some articles are open access and we hope that in time we will be able to find funding to make it all OA. The journal and the conference are closely linked. The existence and popularity of the conference helped Bristol University Press decide to take on the journal. Many of the articles in the first two issues were created by people who had been to the conference. The journal was launched at the conference in 2025 (there were cupcakes!) and is now receiving a steady stream of submissions. And the journal editors and board members scrutinise the conference programme for potential article creators. (I say ‘creators’ rather than ‘writers’ because we welcome conventional formats with creative elements, such as a research article including illustrative sketches or audio files, as well as creative formats, such as a research article produced as a video or written as a comic.)

I’m sure there is lots of other impact I don’t know about. If you have stories, please share! I didn’t see this coming – I didn’t think so far ahead – I just knew the creative research methods community needed a place to come together. So it is truly heartening for the organising team to see the conference having such a positive impact.

If you are a writer, or any other kind of arts practitioner, no doubt you will have had submissions rejected. Probably many, many submissions. Actors fail auditions; painters have submissions rejected by exhibitions; writers’ work is rejected by journal editors, reviewers, publishers, literary agents etc; and so on. We talk a lot about the pain of being rejected and how to deal with that. Some people compile a ‘shadow CV’ listing their rejections, others print out their rejections and stick them to a wall, and some take a more personal approach. I know one fiction writer who, every time she receives a rejection, buys herself a new piece of good quality underwear. She still doesn’t have a novel published but her knicker drawer is in great shape.

There is plenty of advice online for managing rejection, but I haven’t seen much about the difficulty of turning people’s hard work down. I have rejected journal articles, book proposals, research methods case studies, book chapter proposals, conference submissions, and probably other things as well. I try to do this with compassion and care, though on at least one occasion I cringe to remember (and no doubt more besides) I have not lived up to the high standards I aim for.

As so often with us humans, emotions can get in the way. These may include:

• Disappointment – an intriguing title or premise, and/or a known and respected author, can raise expectations which are not always met.
• Anxiety – for an anonymous author, what if my rejection of their work harms their mental health? For a known author, will my rejection of their work harm my relationship with them? Could they ruin my professional relationship in turn?
• Frustration – this can be generated by a good submission which either doesn’t follow the guidelines, or is not quite as good as a better submission on the same topic, and so has to be rejected. Or by a submission so bad you wonder what the author was thinking.
• Stress – when life feels as if demands are coming at you from all sides, it can be hard to muster the care and compassion needed to produce a kind rejection.

Another thing that can get in the way is time pressure. Care and compassion, for ourselves and for others, takes time. And we need to practice care and compassion for ourselves before we can practice it for others. We need time to process our emotions – our disappointment, anxiety, frustration and stress. Do you allow yourself that time? Or do you eat/drink/smoke/shop your feelings into submission and carry on chasing deadlines?

In today’s super-speedy world, it can be difficult to prioritise ourselves. But if we don’t prioritise ourselves, others are less likely to prioritise us, and we are less likely to prioritise others. This leads to a vicious circle of increasing emotional scarcity which is not healthy for anyone. My Australian colleague Narelle Lemon edits a solution-focused book series on Wellbeing and Self-care in Higher Education which contains a wealth of advice and support for anyone struggling with this, or just wanting to do it better.

So when you’re reviewing something that is going to need rejecting, deal with your own feelings first, because it does take a toll. Give yourself the time and space you need to process those feelings. Then think about how to frame the rejection in a careful, compassionate way. Are there any aspects of the work you can praise? Where improvements are needed, can you offer advice on how to make those improvements? Do you know of any useful references you could recommend? Can you add some encouragement for the future? The answer to one or more of these questions may be a straightforward ‘no’, and that is understandable; I’m certainly not suggesting you should invent praise, advice etc. But these are questions I ask myself when I’m reviewing, and where possible I aim to answer them in my review, even if it is a rejection.

I received a truly delightful rejection recently. I was seeking sponsorship for the International Creative Research Methods Conference, and I thought an organisation I have worked with several times might be interested, so I emailed my main contact. The response came from someone else who I didn’t know. They wrote:

Dear Helen,

Thank you so much for getting in touch. It’s impressive to see the breadth of your contributions to [organisation] over the years: your commitment and dedication to creative research methods is clearly deep-rooted and inspiring.

The International Creative Research Methods Conference sounds like a brilliant and much-needed space for methods enthusiasts! While we’re unfortunately not in a position to offer sponsorship at this time, we really do appreciate that you thought of [organisation] as a potential sponsor.

We wish you every success with next year’s event!

With best wishes, and the very best of luck,

[name]

There is a saying that goes “in a world where you can be anything, be kind” which I think makes a lot of sense. That rejection was so kindly written that it barely even stung. I think it’s exemplary, and from now on I’m going to try to inject more kindness into the rejections I need to make.