Abstract
In this article, I consider diffractive approaches to participant debriefing. In other words, I consider how the feminist relational materialist philosopher Karen Barad’s concept of diffraction can be utilised as an innovative approach to participant debriefing. I start this article by explaining how feminist relational materialist philosophers have troubled the philosophical assumptions underpinning traditional approaches to participant debriefing. I then consider how feminist relational materialism has contributed to post-qualitative approaches to research which involve utilising philosophical concepts as methods. Adopting a post-qualitative approach, I go on to present Karen Barad’s concept of diffraction as a participant debriefing method that involves participants, researchers and non-humans contributing to research projects becoming different. As part of this, I consider diffractive debriefing in the context of a research project with 21 school pupils in the Southwest of England that involved young people telling stories about menstruation in their everyday lives. In doing so, I describe the diffractive debriefing workshops that were part of such a project. I then draw on such workshops to describe three general principles that I followed when developing a diffractive approach to participant debriefing. The general principles I discuss are: (1) Researchers should avoid instructing participants about what happened in a research project (2) Diffractive debriefing should not finalise what a research project can become and (3) Diffractive debriefing involves an approach to ethics that foregrounds response-ability. I finish the article by considering how diffractive debriefing could be part of research projects beyond my research project which focused on young people and their menstruation stories.
Introduction
Participant debriefing is a common practice in qualitative research. As Sieber (2004, p. 240) explains, it generally involves ‘a conversation between investigator and subject that occurs after the research session’ that acts as an opportunity for participants and researchers to discuss what happened in research events (e.g. interviews or observations). Such a practice can be utilised to achieve different aims in qualitative research. For instance, Aluwihare-Samaranayake (2012) posits that participant debriefing is a method for mitigating potential harms that research presents to participants. Sieber (2004, p. 240) also suggests it is an opportunity ‘for the investigator to thank the subject for participating, more fully explain the research, and discuss the subjects’ perception of the research experience.’ Flick (2014) and Lincoln and Guba (1985) go further and present participant debriefing as a way to improve the validity of qualitative research findings by checking whether participants agree with researchers’ interpretations of their behaviours, experiences or memories. Despite helping researchers to achieve different aims, participant debriefing methods are commonly underpinned by the assumption that researchers and/or participants can critically examine research events (Sieber, 2004). In other words, participant debriefing is underpinned by the philosophical assumption that humans can stand back from research events and reflect on them.
The philosophical assumptions underpinning reflection, and thereby participant debriefing, have been criticised by feminist relational materialist philosophers (Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017). Here I refer to feminist relational materialism as a family of theories that assume that reality is constructed through the relationality of human subjects and non-human objects. In doing so, feminist relational materialists criticise the famous Cartesian assumption (Murris, 2016) that knowledge of an inert outside world can be gathered on the inside of the human subject who can then use their knowledge to manipulate or act on the world (Braidotti, 2022). Instead, feminist relational materialists assume that the human subject is ‘embodied and embedded’ in the world (Braidotti, 2022, p. 6). As such, feminist relational materialists criticise the idea that human subjects can ‘step back’ and reflect on the world ‘at a distance’ (Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010, p. 536).
Feminist relational materialism thereby has implications for how research methods like participant debriefing are understood. As Murris (2021) explains, if human subjects cannot observe or reflect on an external reality, then methods are not tools to help humans understand or represent a fixed reality. Rather, for feminist relational materialists, methods help to construct reality.
Davies (2020) suggests that such a view means that there is an ethical obligation for researchers adopting a feminist relational materialist approach to consider how their methods make a difference in the world (i.e. how they help to construct/reconstruct reality). St Pierre (2021) and Murris (2021) have presented post-qualitative research as a methodological approach that involves such considerations. Post-qualitative research ‘proposes philosophy or concept as method’ (Murris, 2021, p. 3) and involves working with philosophical concepts to reimagine the world or create new realities.
One philosophical concept that post-qualitative researchers have proposed as a method is feminist relational materialist philosopher Karen Barad’s concept of diffraction (Dunk, 2020). For Barad (2007), diffraction is situated within what they call an agential realist ontology which foregrounds the assumption that phenomena (e.g. a human, an object) come into being through their relationality or ‘intra-action.’ As part of such a relational ontology, diffraction is a concept Barad uses to argue that making difference in the world is a relational practice.
Haraway (1992) originally proposed diffraction as an optical metaphor for how different people and/or non-human things can make difference in the world together. In doing so, Haraway (1997) drew on the notion of diffraction in physics which involves the bending and spreading of waves when they encounter a barrier or an opening. She suggested that just like waves cross over with one another to become different in themselves and make a diffraction pattern, making interference or difference in the world involves the relationality of different people and/or non-humans.
Barad (2007) builds on Haraway’s (1992) notion and suggests that diffraction is not just a metaphor but is itself the method of making difference in the world. To do so, Barad (2007) draws on the work of Niels Bohr and his contribution to quantum physics. Bohr found that when electrons (understood as ‘tiny particles of matter’ Barad (2007, p. 102)) are fired through a diffraction grating (two slits in a partition), they produce the diffraction pattern characteristic of a wave, and thereby do not perform as a particle (Barad, 2007). This led Bohr to suggest that the act of observing something affects how it performs, meaning that an observer and the thing being observed become ‘inextricably entangled’ (Fox & Alldred, 2023, p. 96). According to Barad (2007), Bohr argued that an electron can perform as both a particle and a wave and that, at a quantum level, the way electrons are observed affects how they perform. Barad (2007) draws on Bohr’s work and Haraway’s (1992) notion of diffraction to posit that in the social world when a human utilises a non-human tool to observe something, diffraction happens. As such, Barad (2007) suggests that through relationality with one another, the thing being observed as well as the human and non-human tool doing the observation diffract or become different in themselves to create new realities.
In this paper, I position diffraction as a participant debriefing method and, in doing so, present an innovative post-qualitative application of diffraction.
How has Diffraction Been Used in Post-Qualitative Research?
Previous post-qualitative research has tended to position diffraction as data analysis method (Fox & Alldred, 2023) rather than an approach to participant debriefing. Post-qualitative researchers in areas as diverse as education (Mazzei, 2014; Nordstrom, 2015; Warren, 2021); intergenerational practice (Peach, 2024; Martens, 2016); social work (Sinclair et al., 2023); psychology (Smith & Monforte, 2020) and information studies (Østerlund et al., 2020) have utilised diffractive reading as a data analysis method. In doing so, such researchers have read different data/texts ‘through one another’ (Barad, 2007, p. 195) to produce creative insights. In other words, rather than comparing different data/texts and pitching them against one another, researchers adopting diffractive reading as an analysis approach have worked with different data/texts to produce new ways of understanding the world. For example, Mazzei (2014) read interviews with professors who were also first-generation college graduates through different theoretical lenses (interpretivism, poststructuralism and feminist relational materialism) to produce new ways of understanding graduates’ experiences.
Some post-qualitative education researchers have also positioned diffraction as a form of activist research (i.e., a method for bringing about social change). Renold et al. (2021), for example, asked teachers in Wales to complete a creative audit of Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) in their schools. Rather than using such audits to report on how RSE is taught in Welsh schools, the authors understood the creative audit as diffracting with ‘feelings or ideas’ amongst teachers which ‘enabled them [teachers] to re-imagine new ways of doing RSE’ (Renold et al., 2021, p. 544). In this way then, in taking a diffractive approach, the authors understood the creative audits as affecting teaching practice and thereby making difference in the Welsh education system.
Diffractive Debriefing: an Innovative Approach to Participant Debriefing
Inspired by how some post-qualitative researchers have worked with diffraction as a form of activist research (Strom et al., 2019), in this paper I present diffraction as an innovative participant debriefing method that can contribute to social change. In doing so, I suggest that unlike participant debriefing, diffractive debriefing approaches do not involve participants and researchers reflecting on a completed research project that is external to them. Rather, I suggest that in diffractive debriefing, research projects diffract with participants, researchers and other humans and non-humans to become something different. To clarify, I posit that diffractive debriefing is a method that involves creating new possibilities for research projects.
I argue that by foregrounding the production of new possibilities for research projects, diffractive debriefing marks a break from participant debriefing. Even so, I suggest that there are continuities between traditional and diffractive approaches to participant debriefing. This is because as ways of doing participant debriefing, both approaches involve considerations of past research events. However, unlike participant debriefing (Flick, 2014), I suggest that in diffractive debriefing the purpose of considering what happened in a research project is not to inform participants about what a researcher found out or to collect participants’ interpretations of the project. Rather, I argue that in diffractive approaches to debriefing, the act of considering what happened in a research project diffracts with the project to create new possibilities for the project. To put it another way, a diffractive approach to participant debriefing involves considering what happened in past research project events as a way of helping the project to become something different.
Diffractive Debriefing in a Post-Qualitative Research Project
In this paper, I consider diffraction as a debriefing method in the context of my research with 21 young people aged 15 years old from two schools in the Southwest of England. The research project considered what young people’s menstruation stories do and how they could make a difference in education in England. It involved five workshops which focused on participants telling stories about menstruation in their everyday lives. Each workshop lasted between 1-1.5 hours and took place in the schools that participants attended.
Details of Participants.
All participants provided informed consent to take part in the workshops and the project received ethical approval from the School for Policy Studies Research Ethics Committee at the University of Bristol. My approach to participant consent was inspired by Barad’s (2007) argument that the ability to decide is not self-willed and possessed but emerges through the relationality of humans and non-humans. In other words, I assumed that people (of any age) are not inherently capable or incapable of consenting to take part in research but that their capacity to do so is dependent on their relationality with other humans and non-humans. As such, I provided participants with information about the project, discussed it with them and provided opportunities for them to ask questions to help them to make an informed choice about taking part. I also made parent information sheets available for participants to give to their parents if they wanted to.
All other elements of the project were also underpinned by feminist relational materialist philosophy but particularly the argument, evident in the work of Barad (2007), that constructing reality or making a difference in the world is a relational practice. As such, I understood all the methods that I employed in the project as phenomena that could help to make a difference in the world through relationality with other humans and non-humans, including me and participants.
The five workshops that participants took part in involved different methods, including object interviews (Woodward, 2020) and focus groups. As part of object interviews, participants brought in objects to help them tell stories about how menstruation is part of their everyday lives. Other participants and I then asked participants unstructured questions about their objects and their stories. I employed this method because it presented opportunities for different human participants and non-human objects to interact (Woodward, 2020) and create or disrupt menstruation stories together. In focus groups, participants responded to statements I prepared about menstruation stories and schooling in England. Some participants responded verbally, and some responded by writing notes or drawing. I understood such focus groups as presenting opportunities for participants, their menstruation stories, and the statements I prepared to make a difference in the world, together. In other words, I assumed that through their relationality, young people’s stories and the statements could diffract or change in themselves to produce new menstruation stories and/or ways of understanding menstruation in English schooling.
The final workshops in each school focused on debriefing. I planned for the final sessions to involve me and participants reflecting on the stories told and discussed in the earlier workshops. Similar to how Aluwihare-Samaranayake (2012) and Sieber (2004) discuss the benefits of participant debriefing, I had understood such a reflective approach as offering a way to bring the project to a close and give participants the opportunity to ask questions about the research. However, inspired by Barad’s (2007) argument that human subjects cannot stand back and reflect on an external reality, I changed my approach. Barad’s (2007) argument led me to consider how participant debriefing could make a difference in the world or help to create new realities. In doing so, I started to wonder how the act of debriefing participants about a research project could diffract with such a research project and lead to it becoming different. Such considerations led me to develop a diffractive approach to debriefing. My approach involved me and participants working with pens and paper to produce maps of stories/events from the previous research project workshops. Such maps then contributed to discussions and debates about what the research project could become once I stopped working directly with participants.
Below I draw on such maps and the discussions and debates that emerged in the diffractive debriefing workshops to describe three key principles I worked with when developing my diffractive approach to participant debriefing.
Key Principles of Diffractive Debriefing
Principle #1: Researchers Should Avoid Instructing Participants About what Happened in a Project
When developing my diffractive approach to participant debriefing, I worked with the principle that, unlike in traditional participant debriefing (Sieber, 2004), researchers should avoid instructing participants about what they think happened in a research project.
In my debriefing workshops with young people in Summerhill High and Greenway Academy, I did not instruct participants about my interpretations of their menstruation stories and events from the previous research workshops. Instead, I invited participants in each school to work with me and pens and paper to create a ‘project map’ of stories and events from the previous project workshops. The process involved me and the pupils in each school sitting around a table and writing notes on a large piece of paper. Sometimes pupils wrote on post-it notes and stuck their notes to the paper. Sometimes pupils and I also stuck down images that I had printed onto paper. Through such a process young people and I, as well as the non-human pens and paper we worked with, helped to produce maps of different events and stories from the project (see Figures 1 and 2). Project map from Greenway Academy. Project map from Summerhill High.
Such an approach was inspired by Barad’s concept of diffraction and particularly the way it troubles the idea that researchers can generate knowledge about what happened in a research project and pass it onto participants. To clarify, diffraction is situated within Barad’s (2007) agential realist ontology which rejects the idea that thinking subjects (e.g. a researcher) are different from inert objects (e.g. a research project) and can thereby study and produce knowledge about them.
Furthermore, Barad’s (2007) understanding of diffraction troubles the notion that researchers are knowledge-holding agents whilst participants are not. This is because in suggesting that phenomena (e.g. researcher, participant, object, research project) become different in themselves through their relationality, Barad’s (2007) framing of diffraction implies that nothing has inherent properties or boundaries. In other words, according to Barad (2007) diffraction does not involve pre-existing bounded things interacting in a linear way. Rather as Lenz Taguchi (2010, 44, my emphasis) explains, where different things diffract or interfere/overlap, they ‘change in themselves in intra-action’ (i.e. they come into being together). Following such a line of thinking, researchers and participants are not bounded things with inherently different properties, but rather come into being through their relationality with each other and/or other human and non-human phenomena. In this way, Barad’s (2007) notion of diffraction also implies that agency (i.e. the ability to make a difference in the world) and knowledge are not attributes inherent to a researcher. Instead, Barad’s diffraction implies that researchers, participants, other humans and non-humans can be agentic and help produce knowledge/reality, but only through their diffractive relationality.
As such, the production of maps in my diffractive debriefing workshops with young people can be understood as diffractive practice. Rather than assuming that I could instruct participants about my interpretations of the project by creating a written representation of them like researchers sometimes do in traditional participant debriefing (Erdmann & Potthoff, 2023), different phenomena (e.g. me, participants, pens, paper) helped to produce the maps together. In doing so, the different phenomena appeared to diffract as per Barad’s (2007) understanding of the practice. In other words, phenomena that contributed to the maps appeared to become different in themselves through their relationality and thereby create new realities. As an example, when participants and I worked with our memories, pens and paper to write notes, the project maps came into being and we all became co-producers of the maps. In other words, the ontologies of the maps and the phenomena they involved (i.e. what such things were), became mutually dependent.
Principle #2: Diffractive Debriefing Should Not Finalise what a Research Project can Become
Such a Baradian (2012, 2007) understanding of diffraction as a practice that involves humans and non-humans becoming different in themselves also inspired me to work with the principle that a diffractive approach to debriefing should not finalise or foreclose what a research project can become. This is because Barad (2007, x) argues that diffraction is not a ‘unidirectional practice’ that involves linear progress towards a fixed outcome or output. Rather, for Barad (2007, p. 91) diffractions are part of ‘the world’s differential becoming’ which they suggest is continuous. In other words, rather than diffraction happening once and leading to a specific change in reality/the world which is then maintained, diffractions continuously happen. In the words of Massumi (2011, p. 6), ‘where becoming has been there is already more to come.’
Drawing on such ideas about diffractions being ‘forever becoming [s]’ (Murris, 2016, p. 16), I avoided telling participants in the debriefing workshops in both schools that one plan for what the project should/would become needed to be created or decided upon. Rather, my diffractive approach involved inviting participants to work with each other, me and the project maps to consider what the project could become. Here, I have italicised the word could to emphasise that my diffractive approach to debriefing involved what Grosz (2004, p. 14) refers to as ‘experiments rather than solutions.’ In other words, my diffractive approach to debriefing involved speculation.
For example, in Summerhill High all participants sat around a large table and looked at the ‘project map’ they had contributed to just before Angela, Charlie, Navia and I had the following speculative conversation about how the project could become different. The conversation involved participants considering how to respond to stories of toilets being vandalised which had contributed to the previous project workshops and which a participant had written about on the project map (although only in relation to ‘female toilets being vandalised’- see Figure 2):
In presenting such a conversation, my intention is to draw attention to how the project kept diffracting with different phenomena including the project map, participants, me, as well as our memories and words and thereby kept becoming different. For example, when Angela and Charlie agreed that they were not ‘much for separate toilets,’ the project became a possible future where Angela and Charlie’s school had gender neutral toilets. In diffracting with my words, ‘Well. Some people might be embarrassed’ and Angela’s suggestions about how to ‘talk about it more,’ the project also became approaches for disrupting the stigma of using menstrual pads in school. In addition, the project became a possible protest when Charlie exclaimed, ‘Do a protest!’
As such, rather than generating a definitive plan for what a research project would become, my diffractive approach to participant debriefing involved the research project ‘breaking apart in different directions’ (Barad, 2014, p. 168). In Haraway’s (1997, 16) terms, diffractive debriefing appeared to contribute to creating ‘an interference pattern’ with the research project that rippled on. Adopting Barad (2007) and Haraway’s (1997) position that diffraction does not involve linear progression towards a fixed output or outcome, it is impossible for me to report on what outputs my diffractive approach to debriefing produced. After the debriefing workshops in Summerhill High, participants may have become involved in a protest, and they may have contributed to addressing experiences of menstrual stigma in their school. They also may not have done. The project and the conversations in the debriefing workshop might have also continued to diffract with other phenomena and become different in ways that were not articulated in the debriefing workshop. Some may rail at the lack of a definitive and measurable output, but to seek one would be to miss the point of Barad’s (2007) notion of diffraction: that making difference in the world is a creative, unpredictable, relational and ongoing practice.
Principle #3: Diffractive Debriefing Involves an Approach to Ethics that Foregrounds Response-Ability
Barad (2007) argues that such an understanding of diffraction has implications for research ethics (i.e. how research and researchers make difference in the world). In arguing that diffraction is a relational practice and that researchers diffract with the humans and non-humans they study, Barad (2007) posits that researchers are not distinct from the phenomena they research. Instead, they suggest that researchers and the things they study become different in themselves or come into being, through their relationality (Barad, 2007). Building on this, Barad (2007, x) argues that researchers have an ethical obligation to welcome the response of the phenomena they study as a way of bringing about ‘ever new possibilities for living justly.’ To clarify, Barad (in Kleinman, 2012) argues that if researchers are not objective onlookers but instead help the phenomena that they study to become different, then researchers should consider how they help such phenomena to become different and thereby what kinds of realities they help to produce. For Barad (in Kleinman, 2012) researchers responding to the needs and/or interests of the human and non-human phenomena they research is a just way of creating difference in the world and thereby an ethical obligation (Bozalek, 2020).
Barad (in Kleinman, 2012) refers to such an ethical obligation as ‘response-ability’. They caution that response-ability is ‘not about the right response, but rather a matter of inviting, welcoming, and enabling the response of the Other’ (Barad in Kleinman, 2012, 81). In other words, Barad suggests that response-able research does not involve researchers adhering to a pre-determined list of rules about ethics. Rather, as Bozalek (2020, p. 143) explains, response-ability involves responding to the ‘interests and needs’ of other humans and non-humans as they emerge or come into being.
Inspired by such arguments, when developing my diffractive approach to participant debriefing I worked with the principle that diffractive debriefing involves an approach to ethics that foregrounds response-ability. Such a principle particularly affected the way that I worked with participants and responded to their requests and suggestions. In Greenway Academy three participants verbally suggested speaking with Ms Green (a senior teacher in the school who had helped me to organise the workshops) about the research project becoming various school-based initiatives. Such a suggestion emerged four times in the debriefing workshop. Whilst only three participants verbally suggested that they could speak with Ms Green, other participants nodded when they heard such a suggestion and no participants verbally disagreed. The following discussion involving me, Pink, Blue, Robin and Batman is an example of such a suggestion emerging. The discussion involved me asking all young people to explain how they had been considering what the research project could become in groups:
Researchers utilising traditional approaches to participant debriefing often report and reflect on what participants say during debriefing encounters (Flick, 2014; Sieber, 2004). Such reporting and reflection generally happen after debriefing events (Flick, 2014). Inspired by the notion of response-ability (Barad, 2007), I took an alternative approach and responded to participants’ suggestion as it emerged. Minutes after the discussion above, Ms Green entered the room, and I verbally invited all participants to discuss what the project could become with her if they wanted to: Paper list of what the project could become.
Although it was Batman, Robin and Pink who had verbally suggested talking with Ms Green about the project, I invited all participants to speak with her. I did not check whether all participants wanted to speak with Ms Green before I invited them to do so and thereby may have surprised them. However, in suggesting ‘if there’s anything you want to share with her, you can do that now’, I hoped to welcome, rather than demand all participants’ responses.
Such an approach was underpinned by Barad’s (in Kleinman, 2012) notion of response-ability which they frame as a way to disrupt exclusions. Barad (2007) uses the term ‘agential cuts’ to describe boundary and exclusion making practices. Barad (2007) suggests that no phenomena have pre-existing qualities, meaning that nothing is inherently excluded or marginalised. Rather they suggest that exclusions and boundaries emerge through the relationality and diffraction of different phenomena. As such, Barad (2007) argues that exclusions are not inevitable or fixed and that response-ability or inviting and welcoming the response of excluded ‘others’ can disrupt and avoid particular exclusions or agential cuts (Barad in Kleinman, 2012). Drawing on such an argument, I suggest inviting all participants to speak with Ms Green (and not just the participants who verbally expressed that they wanted to) helped to avoid excluding some participants from the creation of possible becomings for the research project. This is because such an approach appeared to enable different participants to help create new project realities with Ms Green, rather than only participants who had suggested speaking with her. For example, in response to my invitation, Orange, Red and Batman discussed the project becoming a poster campaign with Ms Green who was holding and reading a paper list that Batman had written which included the word ‘posters’. As part of the discussion, Orange and Red emphasised that posters should be displayed ‘everywhere’ and ‘around the building.’ Orange also suggested that the posters should not be displayed in the toilets because ‘no one’s gonna see them.’ In this way, Orange and Red became co-creators of a possible poster campaign alongside the paper list that Batman had written and Batman who had originally suggested speaking with Ms Green.
In a similar way, the response-able act of inviting all participants to speak with Ms Green seemed to help prevent Ms Green from becoming excluded from the creation of possible research project futures. For example, Ms Green became a co-producer of a possible menstruation talk with younger pupils when she picked up the paper list, suggested that the project could become a talk with Year Six and Seven pupils and Pink responded, ‘we were like talking about going to a primary school.’
Building on this, I suggest that response-ability is not only a way to disrupt exclusions and boundaries in diffractive debriefing. Rather, response-ability or inviting the response of the Other has implications for all aspects of diffractive debriefing. Barad (2007) argues that research ethics (i.e. the way researchers/research makes difference in the world) cannot be separated from epistemology (knowledge) and ontology (reality). Adopting the same position, I suggest that inviting the response of the Other in diffractive debriefing affects the way projects diffract (i.e. become different) and thereby the knowledges/realities that diffractive debriefing helps to produce.
Discussion: Diffractive Debriefing Beyond My Project with Young People
Having described the principles that shaped my diffractive approach to participant debriefing in a research project that focused on young people telling menstruation stories, below I consider how the method could be part of other research projects.
In doing so, I suggest that diffractive debriefing could be part of other post-qualitative research projects. This is because like all post-qualitative research (Murris, 2021), a diffractive approach to participant debriefing is a relational practice that involves humans and non-humans creating difference or change together. To clarify diffractive debriefing involves participants, researchers and non-humans contributing to research projects becoming different in themselves and, in this way, the method involves changing reality. In other words, it involves the ontology of a research project (i.e. what a project is) becoming different through its diffractive relationality with researchers, participants and/or non-humans. This is like how all post-qualitative research (Murris, 2021) helps to change reality alongside different human and non-human phenomena. As such, I suggest that diffractive debriefing could complement different post-qualitative projects. However, because a diffractive approach to participant debriefing involves participants contributing to research projects becoming different, I posit that the method will particularly complement post-qualitative projects that involve participants.
As diffractive debriefing involves participants helping to bring about changes in research projects, the method appears to share similarities with participatory action research (PAR) approaches. This is because PAR involves participants collaborating with researchers to change things (Benjamin-Thomas, Corrado, McGrath, Rudman, & Hand, 2018). However, diffractive debriefing marks a break from PAR in significant ways. As Taylor et al. (2020) explain, PAR focuses on human researchers and participants acting on the world to change it. Diffractive debriefing, however, involves researchers, participants and non-humans contributing to changes in research projects through the relational practice of diffraction. In this way, diffractive debriefing troubles what Taylor et al. (2020, p. 171) call the human-focused ‘ontological locus of agency’ in PAR. In other words, whilst PAR appears to position humans as actors who possess agency, diffractive debriefing involves humans and non-humans helping to bring about changes through their relationality. In this way, whilst diffractive debriefing might complement some aspects of PAR, the method appears to present a different way for research to help create change in the world. To clarify, diffractive debriefing may complement PAR projects and the way they disrupt the assumption that researchers are agents and participants are not (Zuber-Skerritt, 2018). This is because diffractive debriefing involves participants and researchers helping to create changes in research projects together. However, diffractive debriefing does not foreground humans acting on the world like PAR approaches (Taylor et al., 2020) generally do. This is because diffractive debriefing involves research projects diffracting or becoming different with human researchers and participants, but also non-humans.
By involving research projects becoming different in themselves through diffracting with human and non-human phenomena, diffractive debriefing appears to present a way to do impact work in academic research projects. In academia, research impact is generally understood as the changes research brings about in the world beyond academia (Sliwa and Kellard, 2022). Academic research impact is also generally framed as a measurable output (Tuhiwai Smith, 2018). For example, in the UK the impact of research is assessed by scoring outputs of academic research (e.g. book sales, policy changes) against the Research Excellence Framework (Silwa and Kellard, 2022). As such, whilst diffractive debriefing and common approaches to research impact involve changing things, diffractive debriefing appears to trouble common approaches to research impact. This is because unlike common approaches to research impact (Taylor et al., 2020), diffractive debriefing does not involve producing fixed and measurable outputs. Rather, the method involves research projects becoming different- and continuing to become different- in a multiplicity of unpredictable ways. As such, diffractive debriefing appears to offer an alternative way for research to help make difference in the world.
In providing such an alternative approach to research impact work, diffractive debriefing seems to present affordances. This is because the method appears to address problems with common approaches to academic research impact that some scholars have highlighted. Tuhiwai Smith (2018) and Brown (2015) have argued that because research impact frameworks (e.g. the REF in the UK) focus on measuring and comparing research outputs, they only value a limited range of knowledges and outputs, such as study findings that contribute to the ‘capital enhancement’ (Brown, 2015, p. 177) of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Taylor et al. (2020) argue that in doing this, common notions of academic research impact contribute to a ‘knowledge hierarchy’ which means that they are, ‘thoroughly enmeshed within…colonialist presumptions about which knowledge matters’ (Taylor et al., 2020, p. 174). In other words, Taylor et al. (2020) suggest that because common approaches to academic research impact often focus on the production of measurable and comparable research outputs, they contribute to the idea that some types of knowledge are more impactful or valuable than others. Taylor et al. (2020) also suggest that by focusing on the production of quantifiable outputs, common approaches to academic research impact overlook the way that research can contribute to changes in the world in experimental, happenstance and immeasurable ways.
As diffractive debriefing involves research projects changing in creative and unpredictable ways, the method appears to present a way of disrupting what Taylor et al. (2020, p. 173) call the neo-liberal ‘input-output transmission belt’ in academic research. In other words, because diffractive debriefing focuses on research projects becoming different in a multiplicity of creative ways, the method appears to trouble the idea that research leads to fixed outputs that can be measured, valued and compared.
How This Article Could Contribute to Participant Debriefing Approaches
In this article, I have presented diffractive debriefing as a post-qualitative method that involves research projects becoming different in a multiplicity of creative ways. As such, it does not seem appropriate to conclude this article by suggesting that the article itself simply represents diffractive debriefing and how I used the method. Barad (2007) argues that research (and thereby research articles) helps to create reality through diffracting with other human and non-human phenomena. Adopting the same position, I suggest that this article can be understood as something that could contribute to creating a multiplicity of different participant debriefing approaches, but only through relationality with different humans (e.g. researchers, participants) and non-humans (e.g. research projects).
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the young people and teachers who contributed to the research that inspired this article. Without you, this would not have been possible! I would also like to thank my PhD supervisors Professor Debbie Watson and Dr. Jon Symonds for their guidance and unwavering support.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council doctoral studentship (ESRC SWDTP ES/P000630/1).
