I get a request for an online chat several times a week, mostly from people I don’t know and have had no contact with before. The request might come via my website form, a private message on LinkedIn or BlueSky, straight into my inbox – I haven’t had one by carrier pigeon yet but the way things are going that will probably happen soon.

Some people want to talk about me working for them, but if we have had no prior contact that doesn’t usually work out well. I had a request recently from a university in Asia for a half-hour meeting to discuss how I could develop some research methods modules for them. I didn’t have time to spare even for a short meeting, so I asked them to email me the information – and I was glad I had, because it took me about three minutes to work out that I couldn’t help them and two minutes to write a polite email back explaining why. They wanted modules on very positivist-type research, mostly quantitative and including outmoded concepts like neutrality and objectivity, which is about as far from the work I do as it’s possible to get within the field of research methods.

Some people want to talk about collaborating with me. Mostly this means they want me to write with them on a topic of their choosing and help them get that published. When I explain how much writing and publishing work I’m already doing, they realise I don’t have enough spare time to work with them. At the time of writing I am waiting for manuscript review of a new edition of one of my books and scheduling work on a new edition of another one; co-editing two further books; co-editing one book series and editing another. My writing/publishing workload is usually like this.

From time to time, wanting to collaborate with me means someone wants to write a chapter for a book I’m editing or co-editing, or contribute to my conference, or propose a book for one of the series I edit or co-edit. Those discussions are welcome as part of my ongoing work.

Some people ask if I can give them voluntary work or an internship. This may be because I work through a limited company, which might give people the impression that I have a big office and lots of staff, or it may just be because of my profile. Either way I work on my own, in an office in my garden, and I don’t have the capacity to take on a volunteer or an intern, let alone any actual work to offer them.

Mostly people want to tell me about their own work with creative research methods. For sure that is something I’m interested in and enjoy hearing about when I meet someone in person. But – and this is so often the problem – I have to earn a living. Understandably, nobody offers to pay me for online chats and, to be honest, even if they did I probably wouldn’t be keen, because small jobs involve a disproportionate amount of admin. Sometimes people just send me links to their work and ask for my feedback, and this can be a lot – I have had requests to read a whole book, listen to a series of hour-long podcasts, watch a full-length film, and visit an extensive online exhibition, among others. These are clearly people who are passionate about their work, and want to share, which is lovely, but there are already more books I know I want to read than I can find time for in what remains of my life.

There are people who automatically get a ‘yes’ to the question ‘can I have a chat with you?’ These include people who have paid me for work in the past or are going to pay me for work I am currently doing, and people who have collaborated, or do collaborate, with me on research, writing, or other projects. There is another key difference between these people and my cold-callers. This is that people who work with me know how busy I am and approach me with respect and care, and I do the same for them. We might ask each other for favours, but they will be favours requiring only a small amount of time, such as casting an eye over a book proposal or giving advice on a funding bid or career move. In summer 2022, when I was thinking about setting up the International Creative Research Methods Conference, I sought advice from several key people in my networks, asking each one for ten minutes of their time, often tacked onto a meeting we were already having about something else.

I wish I could help all the people who ask for my help. That is one reason I spend a lot of unpaid time creating resources for the research community: this blog, my YouTube channel, setting up the conference, founding the Journal of Creative Research Methods, co-founding the Independent Research Ethics Committee, writing and editing books and book series (for which I do get small amounts of royalties, but nowhere near an actual income).

A few years ago I wrote a post on here about how to get the best out of a busy person. That led to follow-on posts on three Whisperer blogs: Thesis Whisperer, Research Whisperer, and Wellbeing Whisperer; all are worth reading. They all emphasise the need for respect and care during the asking process. So, essentially, if you contact me out of the blue and ask me to read, listen to, watch, or help with your work, that is all about you and shows no respect or care for me.

The moral of this story is: if you want a chat with someone who doesn’t know you, consider how you can show respect and care for that person.

Once again this conference was a great success. The keynote presentations are on YouTube: one from Jacqueline Priego Hernández, plus the launch of the Journal of Creative Research Methods, and one from Amanda Beswick-Taylor. Around 140 people came and shared hugs and ideas across sectors and disciplines, and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. People described it as a well organised and structured, smoothly run, and professionally managed event. They praised the supportive, safe, positive space fostering connection and creativity. Delegates found it to be a friendly, inclusive, collegial, and intellectually stimulating environment. Terms frequently used in the feedback included “outstanding,” “fantastic,” “excellent,” “best-organised,” and “inspiring.”

Of course it wasn’t perfect; no conference ever could be. The most common complaint was about presenters over-running because we don’t use session chairs. We will change this next year. There were two main reasons for not using session chairs: first, we thought people would be able to manage their own time, and second, we don’t have the administrative capacity to organise session chairs. There were some helpful suggestions in the feedback, such as asking presenters to act as chairs for each other within sessions, or asking for a volunteer chair or timekeeper from the audience. We will discuss all of the suggestions and come up with a better plan for 2026.

Most people thought the ticket prices were fair for the quality of the conference and the venue. Some people asked for bursaries, which we would love to provide, but we are reliant on sponsorship for these. The National Centre for Research Methods kindly sponsored bursaries in 2023 and 2024, but they were not able to do this again in 2025 and we could only secure sponsorship for two bursaries this year. We are continuing to explore sponsorship opportunities for bursaries in 2026; we do have one potential sponsor, but haven’t had confirmation from them yet. (If you want to sponsor some bursaries, please get in touch!)

There were also a few calls for more transparency about where the money goes. Most of the money goes to pay for the venue. Every autumn I sign a contract with the venue for a five-figure sum, which I must pay the following year whether or not the conference goes ahead, whether or not we sell enough tickets to cover the cost. We also pay the people who manage the online conference for us, because none of us have the skills to do that ourselves. They are very skilled and experienced, and were complimented in this year’s feedback. Most of the organising team help with the conference as part of their salaried jobs, so we don’t have to pay them from the conference takings (which is just as well because we couldn’t function otherwise). All of this means the conference is in quite a precarious financial position.

In 2023 the conference only just covered its costs; in 2024 and 2025 it made a small surplus. For the last four years two of us have been working entirely unpaid: me, and Nik who does the tech support at the conference and last year spent a couple of weeks writing a bespoke online booking system which means we no longer have to pay to use someone else’s system. We intend to continue building the surplus to enable us to (a) pay ourselves a reasonable rate for the work we do and (b) create a financial cushion big enough to protect us from loss if we had a year where we sold few tickets or the conference had to be cancelled because of an unforeseen event such as another global pandemic. We may also need to pay a part-time conference administrator at some point in the future. And if we ever have enough money to offer bursaries ourselves, we certainly will.

One thing that came through strongly in the feedback was that one person’s compliment is another person’s complaint.

“Loved all the vegan options.”

“Too much of the food was vegan.”

“Wonderfully inclusive!”

“Babies are disruptive.”

“Great to have so much space for conversations.”

“Too much informal chat time, can we have more structured sessions please?”

And so on.

We are never going to get everything right for everyone, but we do aim to get as much right for as many people as possible. So we will continue to record, read, analyse, and consider all the feedback we receive, to try to make this conference better year on year.

The unsolicited feedback on social media was heartwarming. Two people who attended, Kate Hawkins and Shahreen Chowdhury from Pamoja Communications, even made a short animation reflecting on their experiences at the conference, which you can see here.

We have two terrific keynote speakers lined up for 2026, and the call for proposals is out now; deadline midnight GMT on 30 November. Also we have a new initiative this year: One Slide Five Minutes, which we hope will make up for our inability to have posters (there is nowhere to put them in the venue unless we hire an extra room, and that would push ticket prices up). Information about OSFM is available here.

Hope to see you in Manchester next September!

I have known Lucy Pickering for a long time. I first met her almost 30 years ago through a mutual friend, and I got to know her well some years later when we were doing our PhDs at the same time. We talked a lot about ethics and methods and writing, as doctoral students will, and discovered we could work well together in the same physical space; there are not many people I can do that with.

A few years after we graduated, Lucy was ethics lead for the Association of Social Anthropologists when I was ethics lead for the Social Research Association. Our conversations continued and during that period we published our first co-written journal article, about the ethics of presentation, which has now had over 150 citations.

Eight years later we published our second co-written journal article. We began thinking about, talking about, and working on this article in 2019, but we couldn’t quite find our way, then the pandemic intervened. We returned to our ideas in early 2024, the article came together quickly this time, and we submitted our first draft in June of that year. Over the next 14 months it went through three sets of very helpful revisions and a tortuous production process, and was finally published at the end of July 2025. The title is ‘How can we reform research ethics management to make it fit for purpose?’ and we are both astonished and delighted by the number of downloads: over 750 in the first six weeks.

While we were working on it, we were struck by how few accounts we could find of firsthand accounts of going through ethical review processes, and as we were finishing work on this article, we came up with the idea for an edited collection on people’s experiences with research ethics committees, institutional review boards and equivalent bodies. We talked to Bristol University Press about this and they were enthusiastic, so we have put out a call for chapter proposals. The deadline is midnight GMT on Sunday 30 November 2025, and we are excited to see what we get. Perhaps you would like to contribute a proposal, or you know someone who would, or you would be willing to share the call on social media – any of those would be a great help. Thank you.

Writing is difficult, whether it is academic or other writing. Writing is difficult for novices and difficult for experienced writers. If you find writing difficult, that is not because you’re stupid or you can’t do it, it is because writing IS difficult.

Though, to be fair, writing is not always difficult. Writing stutters and stops, starts again, goes round in circles, frustrates and annoys, then one day it starts to flow. Maybe for a sentence or two, a paragraph or two, a page or two; maybe for hours, even days, you are in the zone and writing pours out of you. It feels GREAT.

Then the flow stops. This can feel really horrible, like being forced to leave in the middle of a party you were really enjoying, or a power cut just as you were about to make a level-up move in a video game. People have used all sorts of metaphors to describe the feeling of loss, from “my muse has left me” to “I have writer’s block”.

But – and I cannot stress this enough – This. Is. Just. How. Writing. Works. A piece of writing is like a fish in a river. It hatches upstream, close to the river’s source, and wants to swim downstream to the sea. There are shallow rocky parts where the little fish has to negotiate lots of obstacles in its path. There are shallow smooth parts where the little fish can swim though the water never reaches any depth. There are meanders where the water goes a long way round before it gets back on track, which is tiring for the fish. There are weirs where the river can reach a considerable depth behind the weir but only a little of the water can flow over at a time; this means the growing fish can spend time feeding in the deep areas before heading over the weir and back into the flow. There are dams which create great lakes that don’t look like rivers at all and through which the growing fish has to swim a long distance and then find its way through or over the dam and, again, back into the flow. And then there are estuaries, where the fresh water of writing meets the salt water ocean of publications.

The shallow rocky parts of the river are like the start of writing a new piece of work: it’s rocky and full of obstacles. The shallow smooth parts are like initial short patches of flow: quicker but without much depth. The meanders are what happen when we’re writing our way into a piece. The weirs are the places where some flow has been happening and then the fish gets stuck for a while, and the dams are the places where more flow has been happening and then the fish gets stuck again, perhaps for a longer time. Some fish see other fish swimming past them. But determined fish know that being stuck is temporary, that if they keep trying to find a way they will eventually get back into the flow and closer to the ocean they crave.

The estuary is also a difficult place to be. The tides of rejection and acceptance, of useful and unhelpful peer reviews, of tortuous production processes, of favourable and critical reactions, come in and out, in and out. Even though the fish is quite big now, water flowing in different directions is a new experience, and the fish can feel buffeted by the changing tides. Some fish don’t make it through the estuary, many don’t make it through unscathed, but most of those who do make it through learn useful lessons from the experience about how to survive in the great ocean of publication.

The mass movement of ideas from human brains to publications is similar to the movement of fish born in rivers far inland who migrate down those rivers to the sea. When ideas are moving towards the sea, they are all going in the same direction so they don’t have much chance to notice each other. When they are in the open sea they can swim in all directions and so find other ideas with which to make new ideas.

I suspect I may have extended this metaphor as far as it can reasonably go, and that introducing, say, sharks, or chips/fries, would not be helpful. But I do think it’s a metaphor that may be useful for some people. Writing is also – and this is not a metaphor – a job, and a job is something you have to do whether you feel like it or not.

I don’t believe in ‘writer’s block’. I think it’s an excuse which appeals because it shifts the problem from the writer to the ‘block’. I think it’s much more likely that a writer doesn’t, or feels they can’t, write because they are bored with the writing they are doing, or they fear failure (or success), or they are sabotaging themselves, or too much of a perfectionist, and so on. If you think of your writing as a migrating fish, that fish will keep on going regardless of what might get in its way, until it reaches the sea or dies in the attempt. Dying in the attempt does happen to some pieces of writing, for all sorts of reasons, such as poorly articulated ideas, broken collaborations, or simply a writer running out of steam. Some people conceptualise experiences like this as failures, but I think they are more useful when conceptualised as learning opportunities, because what we learn from our experiences of pieces of work dying, as well as from experiences of our work being published, can all help us to write better the next time.

I guess this is a very 2010s way of looking at the world. I should probably be writing about ‘TikTok or Instagram?’ but as I have never TikToked in my life, and I came off Instagram some years ago, that post is never going to happen.

I started this blog in 2014 – over 10 years ago – and have been hovering at around 1,000 subscribers for a couple of years now. I started putting content on my YouTube channel regularly in mid-2020 – five years ago – and have over 2,000 subscribers there. So, on those stats, YouTube definitely wins.

I love my blog though, probably because I enjoy writing. Also it’s a great archive for me to remember what I was doing and thinking at different times. Yes of course I use both platforms to promote my work, but that’s not the only reason (if it was, I wouldn’t be able to do it – too soul-destroying). Another reason is to build up a body of content that might be useful for people who don’t have enough resources to book me to run a workshop or retreat, or to buy my books. This is why I pay extra to have a searchable blog, so people who want to find out about creative research methods, or radical research ethics, or creative workplace or academic writing, or being an independent researcher, can follow relevant tags or use the search function. And there is also relevant material on my YouTube channel; I sometimes turn a blog post into a video, or vice versa, but mostly the content is different.

It’s interesting to compare the most popular posts and videos of all time. The four most popular posts on this blog are:

Creative Research Methods (2015 – 6,853 views)

Why and How to Negotiate with Academic Publishers (2018 – 3,506 views)

Methodology, Method, and Theory (2018 – 2,826 views)

How To Chair An Event (2018 – 2,480 views)

The four most popular videos on my YouTube channel are:

Methodology, Ontology and Epistemology (2020 – 17,549 views)

Why Is Research Ethics So Important? (2021 – 16,859 views)

Do You Want To Be An Independent Researcher? (2020 – 12,424 views)

Finding And Using Secondary Data In Research (2020 – 11,399 views)

It evidently takes a while for a post or video to become popular (unless something goes viral, but that is very unlikely to happen to any of my content). And I think it is interesting that content intended to demystify – methodology etc – features in both lists. My video on ‘methodology, ontology and epistemology’ has been the most popular one on the channel for some time now. I know it gets used in teaching, which is fine by me – occasionally some lecturer with a conscience will contact me to ask permission, but I always give it because it’s extra promotion for my work and if it also helps a beleaguered lecturer then I’m happy about that too.

That being the most popular video inspired me to start my new ‘What Is?’ series of back-to-basics videos giving brief introductory explanations of key research terms and concepts. More content coming soon!

I was surprised to find that my YouTube videos get so many more views than my blog posts. Logically, this means I should stop writing my blog and focus all my energies on my YouTube channel. However, I have been blogging for 20 years (I had other blogs before this one) and I don’t want to give it up. But my posts may become a little less frequent… we’ll see.

We are looking for a volunteer to attend the International Creative Research Methods Conference online and help to manage the chat. In return for this work we will provide a free ticket to the online conference.

We already have one volunteer, Linda Baines who is President of the National Coalition of Independent Scholars. Linda has attended the conference online in both previous years so has useful experience.

Our second volunteer would be working with Linda to help manage the Zoom chat and liaise with the people managing the online side of things from the venue. There is a keynote at the start of each day, then two streams; we would need you to decide between you who will be attending which sessions, so that they are all covered.

If you would like to apply for this opportunity, please create a Word document providing confirmation that you can work in the BST time zone and that you will be available for the entire conference. Also, please explain why we should select you in no more than 200 words. Send your application to enquiries@creativeresearchmethods.com by midnight on Tuesday 24 June 2025. We look forward to hearing from you!

Ten years ago this month my book on creative research methods was launched. It came about in a classic way. The backstory is that 20 years ago, when I was finishing my PhD, I decided I wanted to write a book on research methods. I knew I couldn’t just write another book on qualitative methods or interviewing or something; I needed a hook. I didn’t come up with one till early 2011 when I was short of work due to the austerity measures imposed by the new UK coalition government. Research and Evaluation for Busy Students and Practitionerswas published by Policy Press in September 2012, and I thought good, that’s one ambition ticked off the bucket list. Then in 2013 I wanted to read a book on creative research methods so I went looking for one online. And I looked, and looked, and eventually realised, with a sinking heart, that if I wanted to read that book I would have to write it first.

A lot has changed in the last ten years: globally of course, but also in the field of creative research methods, and for me professionally and personally. I don’t think my book contributed to any global changes but I do think it has made a difference to the field and I’m absolutely sure it has made a big difference for me. Perhaps also for my publisher, Policy Press, who are publishing a lot on creative methods now – but I’ll let them reflect on that on their own blog if they so choose.

By the time the book was published I had already started teaching at universities. I ran my first creative academic writing retreat in the UK in spring 2015, and my first creative research methods workshop in Canada in the autumn of that year. I haven’t stopped running those types of events, and they now provide most of my income. If I hadn’t written the book I don’t think that would have happened. Also it launched me firmly into scholarly writing: I have written and edited a number of books now, and I co-edit one book series and edit another. Scholarly writing pays pennies per hour but fortunately it enables the teaching I do which is much better paid.

Talking of money, another change for me is that I am not skint any more. When Creative Research Methods first came out in 2015 I was very short of money. Things were improving a bit – 2011-2013 were the worst years; I had to get a part-time office job to pay the bills – but by 2015 I was still only able to pay myself £1,000/month, which was just enough to pay the mortgage and bills, cover my car costs and buy food. This was partly because in those days universities mostly asked me to work for nothing, a hangover from the time when everyone who came to run a workshop in a university was already employed by another university elsewhere. I published a post about saying no to this in 2015, and it was my most popular post in that year by a long way which suggests it struck a chord.

In terms of the field, I think the book has helped, and is helping, to make creative research methods more understandable and acceptable. My book and my work are far from the only factors in this shift; there are many other people doing amazing work on creative methods. In fact my own scholarly work is largely a collation job, pulling together a lot of people’s work into one place, though it is also built on years of my own experience of using creative methods in commissioned research. This also applies for later publications I have had a hand in, such as The Bloomsbury Handbook of Creative Research Methods and the Handbook of Creative Data Analysis, as well as the Creative Research Methods in Practice book series. Also there are now a range of single-discipline books on creative research methods: I was involved in the one on education, but not in the ones on geography, economics, music, and I’m sure there are others too.

The good thing about people who are interested in creative methods is that they have formed a very kind and supportive community. I can think of only two creative methods people, in the whole of the last 10 years, who have not been kind and supportive. As well as our community, we also now have a conference (the International Creative Research Methods Conference) and a journal (the Journal of Creative Research Methods – first issue due in September 2025). I founded both of those, which took a massive amount of work, though I couldn’t have done it without the support of too many individuals and organisations to name. I am particularly grateful to Policy Press, who have sponsored the conference every year so far and whose Journals Director, Julia Mortimer, helped us set up the journal (published by Bristol University Press of which Policy Press is an imprint). I am also particularly grateful to the journal’s editors-in-chief, Sophie Woodward of the University of Manchester and the National Centre for Research Methods, Harriet Shortt of Bath Spa University, and Su-ming Khoo of the National University of Ireland, who are carrying most of the load. I am Consulting Editor which means I don’t have to do very much work now it’s all up and running, thank goodness!

As yet I haven’t made any money from either of these initiatives, though I live in hope. But again, fortunately, my teaching work and a few other bits and pieces keep me afloat financially. I am, in one sense, my own patron – though I do have a handful of real patrons on Patreon and they are an enormous support for my work.

I am now being asked to keynote research methods conferences in various enticing places (and one or two less enticing ones) around the world. It seems I have become something of a figurehead for creative research methods – but creative research methods do not, in any sense, belong to me. They belong to all of us, and any of us can expand the field. Also, creative research methods are not new or some kind of fad: they have been used by Indigenous researchers for tens of thousands of years. I am happy and proud to be doing this work, and I like the thought that I am, in a very small way, building on ancient traditions and helping to keep them alive for the generations to come.

This week’s post is over on the Research Whisperer. Click here to read.

My new book Writing Creatively For Work Or Study: Easy Techniques to Engage Your Readers is published this month by Manchester University Press. We are holding two free online book launches on Tuesday 10 June, one at 9 am BST and one at 6 pm BST. Also, New Zealand poet and academic Helen Sword has very kindly invited me to be a guest at a WriteSPACE special event at 9 am BST on Tuesday 17 June. Feel free to register for any or all – hope to see you there!

I recently joined the Instats platform which was created “for researchers, by researchers” to offer online training in research methods to the research community. People often ask me where they can access my courses. Most of my teaching is commissioned by universities for their own postgraduate researchers and/or staff and so is not open to people from outside those institutions. But now I can offer courses online which are open for anyone to attend.

Teaching online is more restrictive than teaching in person – but it’s a lot more accessible for many students, and less tiring for me. I’m glad I get to do both, because I love teaching in person. I’m writing this post on a train to Manchester to teach creative academic writing to postgraduate students at the University of Manchester, and I know it will be a good day, though I will be shattered tonight. I also enjoy teaching online. It’s a very different challenge but can be just as rewarding to witness students having “light-bulb moments”.

My first offerings via the Instats platform are three one-hour taster seminars, which are free, and three one-day workshops which come at a cost. All will be recorded and available to view. Again, the tasters are free to view, and there is a charge to see the recordings of the one-day workshops; that is lower than the fee for attending in person because of course you don’t get to ask questions.

Here’s the schedule, with links to each session:

I am delighted to be able to offer these sessions to anyone who wants to attend and can make the date and time (and, for the workshops, afford the fee). I think it’s great, too, that they will be recorded. Instats take pride in making recordings available very quickly, usually 12-24 hours after the session. You might want to check out their website and see what else they offer – there are lots of sessions coming up and many more available as recordings. I hope to see you at one of my sessions soon!