When I teach creative research methods or creative academic writing to doctoral students, they often ask me this question. The short answer is: your doctoral research can be as creative as you like. The longer answer adds: as long as the support you need is in place.

Some students tell me they can’t use creative approaches, but this isn’t true these days – and that applies right across disciplines. Support for creative doctoral research comes from four main sources: supervisors, examiners, universities, and literature. It helps if you can decide at a very early stage that you want to take a creative approach, ideally before you choose your supervisors. However, many doctoral students don’t think about this option until they are some way into their doctoral studies.

If you can decide on your preferred approach before you choose your supervisors, you can deliberately select supervisors who will support you in doing creative doctoral research. They will also find you an external examiner who will be supportive. There are increasing numbers of academics who are open to creative work, so this is much easier than it used to be.

You can also check out the level of institutional support. If you think you might want to produce a creative thesis or dissertation, it’s worth finding out whether the university where you’re planning to register has an alternative formats policy. If it does, that should be a big help. If not, you might want to think again, or ask whether such a policy is under development. Alternatively, if you’re underway with your doctoral studies but at an early stage, and your institution doesn’t have an alternative formats policy, you could ask them to develop one. There are plenty of precedents available online.

If you are underway with your studies, and one or more of your supervisors is nervous about the prospect of a creative approach and/or a creative doctoral output, you need to make your case in the form of an academic argument. This doesn’t have to be very long – often a couple of pages is enough – but it should set out clearly what you plan to do, how, and why, with reference to the creative research methods literature. Helpful sources include:

My book on creative research methods

Dawn Mannay’s book on visual, narrative and creative research methods

The Journal of Creative Research Methods

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Creative Research Methods

The Handbook of Creative Data Analysis

The Creative Research Methods In Practice book series

Reimagining Doctoral Writing – an open access edited collection

Doing Rebellious Research In And Beyond The Academy – another edited collection

Five posts on this blog called ‘Getting Creative With Your Thesis Or Dissertation’ numbers one, two, three, four and five

There are also books on creative research methods in specific disciplines and fields, including human geography, economics, music, education, military studies, and critical event studies – maybe others too. Even if you’re not in any of these disciplines and fields, these books may be worth consulting, because methods are often transferable across disciplines.

When I did my own PhD, in the early 2000s, I wanted to be a lot more creative than I was allowed to be. In those days there were no resources I could draw on to make an argument that would convince my supervisors to change their minds. They were very good supervisors, and I enjoyed my PhD studies, but over 20 years ago doctoral students rarely used creative approaches. This is one reason I have invested so much time and energy since then in creating and sharing resources for doctoral students and other researchers. So, if you want to be creative with any element of your doctoral research, these days you don’t have to take ‘no’ for an answer. And for a short cut, you could always try saying “Helen Kara said I could.” You never know – it might work!