From the very start, our aim for the International Creative Research Methods Conference was to make it an inclusive conference. We have mostly managed that – and learned a load of lessons along the way. So I thought I would share some of those with you.

First, you need an inclusive venue. We are very lucky with the studio… in central Manchester, UK, who work hard to be accessible for people with disabilities, neurodivergence, special dietary needs, parents with babies or older children. Everyone is welcome and everyone is catered for, including lived experience researchers. In our first year we had a mix-up over hearing loops. These are essential to have for anyone who may be d/Deaf or hearing-impaired, and we knew that, but we thought they were provided automatically. In fact you have to request them, something we have done every year since. So, even with an inclusive venue, read the Ts and Cs!

One key point for us about using a community-based venue, rather than an academic venue, was to make it clear that researchers from outside academia are as welcome at the conference as academic researchers. This really works: academic researchers do come, of course, and so do statutory sector researchers, third sector researchers, independent researchers, and others. That mix, plus representation from a wide range of academic disciplines and professional fields, leads to very rich discussions. We also appreciate the availability of drinks, snacks, and food throughout the day, and the attention to details of everyone’s dietary requirements. This supports delegates’ autonomy, needs, and choices.

Second, you need an inclusive approach. The venue’s website is very good at this which is a help. We sought feedback from delegates in the first couple of years and used their input to provide the information people need when they are preparing to come to the conference. Our conference now has a dedicated ‘welcome pack’ for delegates, which includes information about how to get to the venue in various ways, floor plans of the venue, and what to expect when you arrive, as well as contact information for the conference team, the conference programme, and floor plans of the venue to help people find their way around. This was produced by Caitlin Murphy who deserves all the credit for her excellent work. We also have communication badges for people to use if they would like control over how much interaction they want at any given time, by communicating their current preference to others in a readily understandable visual form.

One of our decisions from the start was to have a quiet room with natural light and sensory equipment for delegates to use at will. This is primarily intended to support neurodivergent delegates, though it has also been useful for people who were suffering from headaches, or grieving, or for another reason were grateful for some quiet time. Even members of the conference team have been known to use it at times! Hiring an extra room costs us more, but the positive feedback we get about this option makes us sure it is worthwhile.

Third, you need skilled and experienced people to help the online delegates to feel like part of the event. We have two volunteers, one for each online stream, to help facilitate the online chat and liaise with the hybrid conference specialists. Our hybrid conference specialists come from NomadIT and they are very good at creating bridges between the digital conference space and the rooms in Manchester. Between them, the volunteers and the hybrid conference specialists bridge the gap between those attending online and in person. This is really important for us because we know many people want to attend but are unable to come in person due to health, caring responsibilities, geographical barriers, financial limitations and so on. Also, including an online audience helps to further diversify the conversations taking place at the conference.

Fourth, we offer presenters the option of choosing how long they present for: just five minutes in our ‘one slide five minutes’ slot, or 15, 30, 45, 60, 75 or 90 minutes. This increases accessibility: the five-minute option is great for novice presenters; 15 minutes is useful for someone who wants to test an idea on a group; 30 minutes allows for a 20-minute presentation, performance, or activity, followed by 10 minutes of questions; 45 minutes allows for a 30-minute presentation, performance, or activity, followed by 15 minutes of questions; and the longer sessions enable hands-on workshops with plenty of time for discussion. We are also flexible about presentation formats: we don’t exclude conventional PowerPoint-and-chat presentations, but we also welcome interactive and/or performative presentations of all kinds, including outdoor sessions in Manchester’s vibrant Northern Quarter.

Fifth, lots of other little details. During the booking system, delegates are able to choose what name and other information (if any) they want on their conference badge. We start the first day mid-morning and finish the second day mid-afternoon, to facilitate travel for delegates. We don’t have posters or activities in the breaks; we want people to be able to eat, drink, rest and chat. The conference team will also respond to individual needs whenever possible: for example, when a delegate found the lighting in one of the rooms too bright, we found out how to dim those lights and did so. Overall, we do our best to let people know they can self-regulate: move around and/or take breaks if they need to, observe rather than join in if they prefer, and so on.

Finally, we need presenters who understand how to present inclusively – and this will be the topic of my next post.

With thanks to Niobe Dodd and Caitlin Murphy of The Work Inclusion Project for very helpful feedback on an earlier draft of this post.

As we begin planning for ICRMC 2027, we’d like to make delegates aware of our ticket pricing structure for the conference.

For the past three years, we have held ticket prices unchanged to help keep ICRMC accessible. For 2027, due to increasing costs, we will be introducing a tiered pricing model. We are, however, pleased to confirm that delegates who book during the Early Bird period will continue to pay the same rates as in previous years.

Ticket Prices for ICRMC 2027

The Early Bird rates are unchanged from our 2026 pricing, while the Medium Bird and Late Bird rates reflect the increasing costs of delivering the conference. We are sharing this information now so that delegates and organisations can begin planning budgets and securing funding in advance of registration opening.

Please note: to qualify for a particular pricing tier, payment must be received by the relevant deadline, or we must have received a valid purchase order number by that date. Registrations that remain unpaid and do not have a purchase order number in place when the next pricing period begins will be cancelled and will need to be rebooked.

The ICRMC Team

There’s a new scam doing the rounds and it’s aimed at authors. It involves an email with a very flattering review of your book and a request to feature it for a book club. The first one I got allegedly came from Singapore. I thought, “That’s odd, book clubs don’t usually ask authors’ permission,” but then I thought, “Maybe they do in Singapore.” And the review was really good. It said,

“Starting Your PhD: What You Need to Know” immediately stood out to me as a thoughtful and practical guide that addresses one of the most important transitions in an academic journey: understanding how to begin, navigate, and confidently approach doctoral study.

What especially caught my attention is the way your book transforms the often overwhelming experience of starting a PhD into something more approachable and manageable. Through its accessible question and answer format, the book addresses the real concerns prospective and new doctoral researchers often face, offering clarity around the expectations, challenges, decisions, and opportunities that come with entering this advanced stage of academic development.

I was particularly drawn to the fact that the book does not simply explain what a PhD is, but supports readers who are standing at the beginning of a major personal and intellectual journey. Whether someone is considering doctoral study, has recently started their program, or is supporting another person through the process, your guidance provides reassurance, direction, and practical understanding at a time when many students need it most.

The combination of academic guidance, research development, higher education insight, and personal encouragement makes “Starting Your PhD: What You Need to Know” especially valuable for readers interested in education, research, career development, and lifelong learning. It is the kind of book that can help transform uncertainty into confidence and give aspiring researchers a stronger foundation before taking their next academic step.

That is why I would love to invite “Starting Your PhD: What You Need to Know” to be featured at an upcoming Book Club Singapore event.

So I emailed back and said fine, go ahead. Then there was a long exchange of emails during which the writer persuaded me to answer readers’ questions online via Goodreads, and then asked for money for promotion – a request which I refused.

I talked to a colleague about this at the International Creative Research Methods Conference, and learned it was a recent and increasingly common scam. Then I got my second one, rather less fulsome but still flattering:

*The Handbook of Creative Data Analysis* stood out to me for the way it brings creativity and innovation into data analysis while maintaining rigor, systematic practice, and research ethics. Its transferable case examples also make it especially relevant to readers interested in research methods, interdisciplinary work, and new approaches to making sense of data.

This person asked for an hour on Zoom with their ‘book club’, and was quite business-focused:

There are also additional ways our community can create value around the book, including new-reader exposure, visibility, meaningful discussion, reviews, word-of-mouth recommendations, reader engagement, and potential sales.

What is your main goal for *The Handbook of Creative Data Analysis* right now—reaching more researchers, increasing visibility, encouraging discussion around creative research methods, or something else?

Reply with your goal, and I’ll explain how we could tailor the opportunity around it.

I did not reply.

The third one was apparently from Sara Cox, a well-known national radio presenter here in the UK, who actually does run a book club.

I came across Writing Creatively for Work or Study: Easy Techniques to Engage Your Readers recently and wanted to reach out personally because the idea behind it immediately caught my attention: why should professional writing have to be dull simply because it is written for work or study?

What particularly stood out to me is your argument that techniques normally associated with creative writing—tension, sensory language, metaphor, structure, and emotional engagement—can make everyday professional documents more accessible, comprehensible, and memorable.

I was especially intrigued by how far you take that idea. It isn’t simply about making a business plan or report sound more interesting. The possibility of using formats such as novels, comic books, or even film scripts to communicate professional ideas challenges the assumption that workplace writing has to follow one rigid formula.

I’m sure I would have spotted this one as a scam if it had come to me first. For a start, no way does Sara Cox do her own emails of this nature; she has BBC researchers to do that kind of work. For a second thing, the email address was sarabbcradiobookclub@gmail.com and BBC staff do not use Gmail, they have BBC email addresses.

The common phrases, words, and style across all three emails, such as “stood out to me”, “especially”, and the use of full book titles, suggest that these reviews were written by a large language model such as ChatGPT or CoPilot. Seeing them together makes this easy to spot. But I was almost taken in, and at least two professors of my acquaintance were too. It bothers me that less experienced or novice authors might actually be sucked in. So I have written this post to spread the word.

I have already written about the ethics of writing more generally on this blog, and about ethical co-authorship. But, until now, I haven’t written about the ethics of writing alone.

In popular imagination the writer is a solo creature, sitting at a desk churning out words (or procrastinating!). There is some literal truth in this but even when someone is writing alone, they are always in relationship with others. Even if you’re only writing a shopping list, solely for your own purposes, you are in relationship with your future self.

If you are writing something professional – a journal article, book chapter, conference presentation, video script etc – you are in relationship with a bunch of other people. Your audience (readers, viewers etc) are an important subset. You may not know who they are, but even so it is helpful to try to imagine a typical audience member and write for that person. And if you do know who they are – or some of them, at least – you can write directly for them. If you are writing for publication you are in relationship with your publisher and perhaps also your peer reviewers. Professional relationships may be relevant for your writing, such as with funders, managers, or supervisors. And personal relationships may be relevant too, such as with friends or family members who care about your work. Then, if you are representing others in your writing, you are also in relationship with them as you write.

So, you need to consider whether you are representing people ethically. Would the people you are writing about be happy to read (or listen to, or watch) your work? Would people you are referencing feel that their work has been used appropriately and cited accurately? (Now that I sometimes see my own work cited, I realise how easy it is to tell the difference between appropriate, accurate citations and inappropriate, inaccurate ones!)

The content of what you write needs to be ethical. This means avoiding plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and defamation. This last has different definitions in different countries, but generally it doesn’t have to be false, just demonstrably damaging to someone’s reputation. In the UK defamation can lead to a writer being sued for libel. And ethical writing also means telling the truth as best you can. Truth is not singular and specific, but multiple and contingent, which is why elements such as positionality and reflexivity are important for ethical writing.

You need to work with others ethically, which means doing what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it, or communicating at the earliest opportunity if that proves impossible. Missing publishing deadlines can cause all sorts of problems for editors and publishers, especially if they don’t get any warning in advance.

And last but very definitely not least, you need to treat yourself ethically. This means practicing self-care: not taking on too much, and looking after yourself in the process. We all live such busy lives these days that it’s easy to finish one task and race straight on to the next. Writing is difficult, and often important, and when we finish a piece of writing we deserve a proportionate reward. It might just be a quick coffee with a friend, or a break to read a magazine or solve a small puzzle, or it might be something bigger like a night out or a day off. Whatever works for you is fine, the point is to take the time to acknowledge our own achievements, which is good for our mental health and therefore – guess what? – ethical!

This post was inspired by people at #ICRMC26 asking me whether I was enjoying the conference. That question always makes me hesitate, which I think worries the questioner. The answer is not an unqualified ‘yes’, because it’s a lot of work and by the time we get there each year I’m usually very low on spoons. But it’s certainly not ‘no’.

I guess I have a unique perspective on the International Creative Research Methods Conference. It’s one of my passion projects which I hope will form part of my legacy. (The others are the Journal of Creative Research Methods and the Independent Research Ethics Committee.) I knew the creative research methods community needed a place to gather and exchange ideas, and I have been – and am – very glad to be able to help make that happen.

For me, as for the organising team, the conference is a constant priority. We are currently collecting feedback from #ICRMC26 and considering the lessons from that feedback and how we might implement them at #ICRMC27. The call for proposals for #ICRMC27 will go out in a couple of weeks. There are always jobs to be done, all year round, and we meet together regularly throughout the year to ensure everything is on track.

The organising team are amazing and I couldn’t do this without them. We are all so, so lucky to have such a great group of dedicated people supporting the conference.

People are sometimes surprised to hear that I don’t go to any of the presentations apart from the keynotes. This does not imply a lack of interest! The programme is always fascinating, and in the first year I did go to one presentation on the Monday afternoon, but I couldn’t take it in because there was already too much in my head. I realised then that my role is to host the conference, talk to as many people as possible, and help with any jobs that need doing along the way. So that’s what I do, and I have downtime when the sessions are running, or longer chats with people who are also taking a break.

Aspects of the conference I enjoy include seeing people connecting with each other in the breaks, meeting other creative researchers, and working with the excellent staff at our lovely venue The Studio. I love how equitable it is, how free of egos and competition. I appreciated the young delegate who looked at me sternly one lunchtime and demanded to know whether I had eaten (I had, earlier than everyone else so I could spend more time meeting people). I am grateful for the quiet room where I can go to recharge. The conference is a job of work, for me and the other members of the organising team, but it is work we all love.

This year, in the feedback, people have talked of me as a pioneer, a changemaker, and a legend. These are lovely compliments but I think they are overstating the case. Yes, I am enacting some leadership around creative research methods at present, but I’m far from the only person doing that; many conference delegates are too. And you know what I learned this year? Because of the squeeze on university funding, some delegates booked annual leave and paid for their own tickets to make sure they could get to the conference. That is evidence of the community’s commitment to creative research methods, and in my view this is what we should be recognising and celebrating.

I’m glad to be able to contribute to the development and strengthening of the creative research methods community which is a terrific group of people doing amazing work. But the conference wouldn’t happen without all of us, as it has no external funding and only a little sponsorship, so we depend on ticket sales. Every single ticket bought, or bursary funded, helps the conference to exist. As one delegate commented when I pointed this out, ‘It takes a village.’ (I have forgotten who said this to me, so if it was you or you know who it was, please tell me in the comments so I can give appropriate credit.)

Also, the change we are making is not made by any one individual. We are creating change collectively; we are all pioneers. Yes, my contribution is important at present, but it’s not all down to me. If I couldn’t come one year for some reason, the conference would still happen, and it would still be excellent. People miss regular conference-goers: this year people missed Dawn Mannay, Kate Carruthers Thomas, and the Lawnmowers, and last year people missed Jess Mannion and Charlotte Marshall. So if I wasn’t there, people would miss me, too – but, as they say, the show would go on.

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!

Other people have started calling me a professor. When I worked in South Africa last October, Professor Lynn Hendricks, who brought me over, referred to me as Prof Helen Kara. When I queried this, she told me firmly that as far as she’s concerned, I am a professor.

Then this year Professor Jackie Carter made a similar comment on LinkedIn.

So can I call myself a professor now?

On the one hand, I can call myself whatever I like. I could style myself Sovereign of Scholarship or Empress of Enquiry if I wanted to. My friend and colleague Janet Salmons calls herself a free-range scholar, and I wish I’d thought of that first! So in this sense, yes, I could call myself a professor.

On the other hand, the title of professor is given to people by other people in recognition of their professional accomplishments. The recipients are usually experts in their field. I was very uncomfortable with the idea when people began to call me an expert, but that was over 10 years ago and I’ve got used to it now. (Though I’m still questioning it as a concept, particularly the way it intersects with power.) Also, professors have usually made a significant contribution to their field. Well, OK, I’ve done that too. But, and this is the crucial part, professors are all academics, and I am not, and never have been, an academic.

Professorships are given to people by other people, but always in an institutional context. There are honorary professorships, but I’ve never been offered one of those (except for the time an invitation came from a person who hadn’t checked whether their institution agreed with the offer, which they didn’t, so it never actually happened).

I’m happy calling myself an independent researcher and scholar because that’s what I am. So I won’t be calling myself a professor. If an institution ever wants to award me an honorary professorship, I may rethink this, but given the current state of academia I don’t see that happening.

What might happen, though, as I’m in my 60s now, is that in a few years’ time I could award myself the title of ‘independent researcher emerita’. We’ll see!

In 2025, after 25 years as an independent researcher, I was awarded research funding for the first time. Not from the UK – I have written elsewhere about how independent researchers are not eligible for any UK government research funding, and how short-sighted I think that is – but from the Independent Social Research Foundation which is based in Europe. They gave me £7,100 to work with George Watts and Kate Fox towards a definition of neurodiversity-affirming space.

We are all neurodivergent ourselves, and we worked with neurodivergent people in an online and a face-to-face workshop. Of course we used creative methods: story stems, drawing, poems, mapping, collage plus a great deal of chat. Our participants were generous with their time and ideas. We also analysed creatively, combining thematic, poetic, and narrative analytic work. And we are disseminating creatively, through a zine which you can access here. Today I’m in Durham with George at the Neurodevelopment and Neurodiversity conference, where they said we could have a poster but we decided a zine would be better and fortunately the conference organisers were happy to give us the go-ahead. We have printed copies to give away and a QR code for people who want digital access.

Our findings are formulated as a working definition, reflecting both the scope of the project and the people we were able to include. With 20 participants, we achieved diversity across age, gender, and ethnicity, though we were not able to include non-speaking neurodivergent people — a meaningful gap that we want to name directly. I recently read Upward Bound by the non-speaking autistic writer Woody Brown, and it sharpened my thinking about whose experiences our definition may not yet capture. We offer this definition as a starting point, not a final word.  

Here’s our working definition:

• Neurodiversity-affirming spaces are physical and virtual environments which aim to enable neurodivergent people to function safely, comfortably and without judgment, with understanding and acceptance of their physical, emotional, and communication needs.
  
• Neurodiversity-affirming spaces are adaptive and responsive to the sensory and communication needs of the people in them, including non-speaking people, and to changes in those needs. 
  
• Neurodiversity-affirming spaces accord with the principles of the neurodiversity paradigm* (Walker 2021) which value the natural and creative diversity of different minds and ways of being. 

If you would like to download this, plus a note about the neurodiversity paradigm, you can do so here. The zine is available here, and the story I wrote from the narrative analysis (which wouldn’t fit into the zine) is here.

This is now for others to use and take forward. We hope it will prove useful.

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

We are specifically seeking an individual with prior experience of moderating and managing online conference chats or similar digital events. Confidence in managing discussions, responding to participants, liaising with the people coordinating the online event from the venue, and supporting smooth online delivery is essential. You will be working with a second volunteer, already recruited, who is very capable but not experienced.

There is a keynote at the start of each day, followed by two parallel streams; you will need to decide between you who will attend which sessions so that all are covered. The full programme can be found here. It is essential that you are available for both full days (Monday 7th and Tuesday 8th September 2026) to ensure complete coverage across all sessions.

If you would like to apply for this opportunity, please create a Word document confirming that you can work in the BST time zone and will be available for the entire conference. You should also outline your relevant experience moderating or managing online events and explain why we should select you (in no more than 200 words).

Please send your application to enquiries@creativeresearchmethods.com by midnight on Friday 10th July 2026. We look forward to hearing from you!