Abstract
This article is developed from a presentation given at the 4th International Conference of Possibility Studies. In the context of a doctoral project in higher education, it explores how students, lecturers and materialised learning environments participate in creative work in interdisciplinary settings. In a series of walking ‘intra-views’, the intra-actions of humans, more-than-humans and disciplines, are conceptualised within an agential realist framework. The article contributes two methodological strategies which strive to implement Karen Barad’s proposal of a diffractive methodology. These two strategies, diffractive questioning and working with text fragments, are presented in the specific context of interdisciplinary modules taken by students in their second year of undergraduate study at Anglia Ruskin University, UK. For each strategy, I clarify how theoretical concepts were used, and share excerpts from materialised conversations about experiences of creative learning and teaching. The final section considers questions emerging from the post-presentation discussions at the conference. Consistent with agential realism, this article does not claim to provide a fixed ‘formula’ for diffractive analysis. Rather, its purpose is to offer specific examples of analysis, for further diffraction by researchers interested in using an agential realist framework.
Introduction
It has been argued that higher education in the 21st century has been ‘disrupted’ (Purcell, 2014): universities are under increasing pressure to remain distinctive in a competitive global marketplace. Many institutions are increasingly keen to offer their students engaging learning experiences, informed by innovative teaching approaches. Contemporary HE practitioners, particularly in teaching-focused universities, increasingly need to ‘unlearn’ their existing teaching patterns and assumptions (McWilliam, 2008) and move towards a pedagogy which embraces the uncertainty and fluidity of the 21st century. A key element of pedagogical transformation is the need for creativity, on the part of educators themselves, which will in turn release the creative potential of their students (McWilliam, 2009).
In this context, how do university students experience creativity? How do lecturers facilitate creative processes? These questions could be explored through qualitative research, using well-established methodological tools such as interviews and thematic analysis of transcripts. However, Karen Barad’s (2007) agential realism offers new ways of understanding the world, and what comes to matter in 21st-century higher education. With its proposal of a diffractive methodology, agential realism allows for the emergence of innovative, yet rigorous methods for understanding creative and interdisciplinary learning experiences, and hence future possibilities for higher education. In this article, I first outline the background to my doctoral research and briefly contextualise it within the theoretical and empirical literature. I then share two methodological strategies inspired by agential realism, diffractive questioning and working with fragments. The contribution of the article lies in the development of these two specific strategies. The reader may wish to engage with these strategies diffractively, for example by questioning, developing or adapting them for different research contexts.
Theoretical Background and Context of the Research
McWilliam and Dawson (2008) use the notion of ‘creative capital’ to argue for creative enhancements to HE pedagogy, which can develop a range of competencies for graduate employability, including teamwork and leadership skills. Significantly, they also call for creativity in HE to be recognised across interdisciplinary boundaries, and beyond subjects traditionally regarded as ‘creative arts’. These arguments point to an egalitarian, non-exceptionalist view of creativity which can be traced through developments in creativity theory. Earlier models (e.g., Amabile, 1983; Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009) acknowledge the creativity of day-to-day activities of individuals who are not established or renowned artists. In addition to this, more recently, there has been a consensus that creativity must be recognised as a dynamic, socially constructed phenomenon which always has a relational dimension beyond the individual (Glăveanu et al., 2020). Crucially also, creativity is increasingly seen as a material, embodied phenomenon, which involves more-than-human actants as well as human ones (Glăveanu & de Miranda, 2021). As illustrated by Malafouris (2023), an example would be the understanding of how material agency and creativity occur when a ceramic artist works with clay. In traditional models of creativity, the clay is the object, shaped by the artist’s creativity. By contrast, a materialist understanding acknowledges that both have agency: the potter acts on the clay, but the clay also acts on the potter (Page, 2018, p. 6).
This acknowledgement of nonhuman agency reflects what has been termed the ‘cultural turn’ in philosophy in the first decades of the 21st century, associated with new materialisms and posthumanism (Coole & Frost, 2010). These philosophical movements are multi-faceted and an in-depth exploration of their many complexities is beyond the scope of this article. However, they share a striving beyond the humanist perspective, something that has significant repercussions for established notions of ontology, epistemology, ethics and scientific inquiry. The physicist and philosopher Karen Barad (2007), for example, has set out a theoretical framework, ‘agential realism’, in which physical matter and meaning are not separable, but enmeshed in material-discursive entanglements.
A philosophical approach of this type has resonances for 21st century higher education, and specifically the ARU Ruskin Modules as the locus of my research. This array of interdisciplinary modules is offered to undergraduate students at ARU in their second year of study. Students take their chosen Ruskin Module as a credit-bearing, assessed course of study over one trimester, attending weekly sessions. 1 Each Ruskin module is entitled with a question or ‘wicked problem’, mapped onto the United Nations Goals for sustainable development. In this way, the Ruskin Modules are designed to encourage students to grapple with the complexities of the 21st century and equip them with skills such as team work, solving problems, critical thinking and, crucially, creativity (Acevedo & Middleton, 2025).
These innovative modules have already been explored from a range of perspectives, including transformative education (Lee et al., 2025) and implementation at institutional level (Brown, 2025). My research contributes an additional perspective by exploring the Ruskin Modules through an agential realist framework. I selected two modules for their emphasis on creativity, and in particular, opportunities provided on the module for innovative and creative responses. Students on each of these modules are encouraged to respond to assessment tasks in a range of formats beyond the traditional essay, including embodied performance, podcasts, collage, musical composition, poetry and narrative. All of these can be conceptualised as material-discursive practices; this makes them a highly appropriate locus for agential realist research into creativity in an interdisciplinary setting in higher education. However, the methodological challenge is how to explore these practices in a way that is commensurable with agential realist theory.
Beyond the Traditional Interview: Intra-Viewing
The interview is a well-established instrument in traditional qualitative research (Platt, 2012). In particular, the semi-structured interview is deemed capable of eliciting ‘the fullest account possible’ of the participants’ perceptions (King et al., 2018, p. 69). This is in line with an interpretivist research paradigm, in which the qualitative researcher interprets the participant’s responses (Atkins & Wallace, 2016). In this paradigm, the perceptions of human subjects, interviewer/interpreter and interviewee/participant, form the basis of analysis. However, in many ways, the traditional qualitative conceptualisation of the interview may not be commensurable with an agential realist framework. Firstly, the notion of ‘interaction’ between two pre-existing entities with determinate boundaries is at odds with Barad’s (2007) framework, in which entities emerge from their relations, termed ‘intra-actions’, without pre-existence (p. 333). Second, incorporating earlier critiques of representationalism by Foucault and Butler, agential realism troubles the notion of subject and object, of representer and represented. This has implications for any concept of the researcher as detached ‘subject’ aiming to interpret an ‘object’ of research. Third, traditional qualitative interviews rarely consider the role of materiality in planning, conducting and transcribing interviews. Human subjects are ‘represented’ by the linguistic discourse of the interview transcript. Little or no attention is paid to the more-than-human participants in the interview process, such as the material environment, and the digital and physical systems by which ‘data’ is recorded, transcribed, coded and interpreted.
Kuntz and Presnall (2012) propose a wandering ‘intra-view’, where researcher and participant walk and talk. This conceptual framing allows for exploration of experiences beyond individual human entities, and ensures that the researcher is not a detached observer, but rather a participant, entangled in the material-discursive practice of the research. Adapting this model to the specific context, I used campus-based walking intra-views as a methodological practice, or in Barad’s terms, an ‘apparatus’ of research.
The overall aim of my intra-views was to achieve greater understanding of creative processes in higher education. More specifically, my purpose in using intra-views was to acknowledge how the materiality of the campus environment made itself felt, irrupting into and even shaping the flow of discussion. This allowed for the consideration of nonhuman elements, encountered while walking, as participants in the material-discursive practice of research, including learning spaces, resources and the campus environment. For example, in one instance, walking past a rehearsal space, the presence of a mirror prompted a participant to discuss learning resources for the performing arts, and what it means to be ‘seen’ in higher education. In other intra-views, passing through open spaces on campus led to discussion of space and its effect on creative processes.
The flow of talk in each intra-view emerged from the general topics of creativity and interdisciplinary learning, but without a predetermined question frame. In this way, the conversation was allowed to develop freely, in an effort to implement Barad’s notion of ‘inviting, welcoming and enabling the response of the Other’ (Kleinman, 2012, p. 81). Put differently, the intra-views strove to achieve ‘response-ability’, conceptualised as the ability of human and nonhuman participants to respond within the entanglement of the research process.
Towards a Diffractive Methodology
Central to Barad’s (2007) theory of agential realism is the notion of diffraction. This is entangled with earlier work by Donna Haraway, who coined the term as a way of understanding how historical developments operate through dynamic patterns of difference (Haraway & Goodeve, 1998). Diffraction differs from the more traditional optical metaphor of reflection, which, Haraway argues, leads to the trap of sameness that precludes the dynamism required to make a difference (see also Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017). For Haraway, diffraction offers the possibility of a ‘more critical and difference-attentive mode of consciousness and thought’ (Geerts & Van der Tuin, 2021, p. 173).
In Barad’s agential realism, diffraction is developed not only through post-structuralist theories of difference, but also through rigorous explanations of quantum physics, notably the writings of the philosopher-physicist Niels Bohr. Barad argues that diffractive patterns are inherent in the world’s ongoing process of becoming, including in everyday phenomena such as the interference patterns which occur in waves overlapping on the surface of water, or in the patterns of colour occurring on soap bubbles or patches of oil (Barad, 2007, p. 80). Through detailed examples from classical and quantum physics, Barad draws attention to the interference of waves, where peaks and troughs coincide or cancel each other out in endlessly iterative patterns of difference. These patterns occur constantly in the world’s ongoing process of ‘worlding’ (Barad & Gandorfer, 2021). Further, diffractive patterns are material-discursive, that is, they are neither confined to what is considered the ‘physical world’ nor to ‘discourse’. Diffractive patterns of difference also occur across time, so that diffraction is not limited to classical notions of spatial, material or temporal realms, but endlessly becoming. Barad (2007, pp. 88–94) calls for a ‘diffractive methodology’ capable of tracing such patterns with precision and rigour to understand the differences that matter.
It is to be noted that in an agential realist framework, diffraction is also a process of reading. Barad (2007) argues that insights can be ‘read through one another’ (p. 71), so that meaning emerges from the relations and differences between readings. For example, agential realism is itself diffractive, in its reading of insights from post-structuralist theory in the humanities ‘through’ the scientific discourse of quantum physics. Similarly, the chapters of Meeting the Universe Halfway are described by Barad (2007, p. 74) as a ‘diffraction grating’, such that the reader experiences patterns of difference emerging between the different chapters.
Notions of diffractive reading are already being taken up in social science and humanities research. For example, Van der Tuin (2016) sets out a theoretical basis for reading diffractively. Diffractive approaches to textual analysis are also being explored: Murris and Bozalek (2019) demonstrate how theoretical and empirical texts can be juxtaposed and read ‘through’ one another. However, there is no consensus on how to ‘do diffraction’ in social science research. To some extent, this lack of a ‘formula’ for analysis is to be expected, indeed insisted on. In contrast with some existing forms of data analysis, notably thematic analysis with its six steps to follow (Braun & Clarke, 2006), a diffractive analysis cannot be formulaic. As Barad points out, agential realism cannot be distilled into a formula for analysis, since agential realist analysis must attend to the phenomenon in its specificity (Barad & Gandorfer, 2021).
It is clear, then, that a diffractive analysis must attend to relational patterns of difference, rather than attempt to represent pre-existing ‘things’. This is because in agential realism, entities do not exist prior to their intra-actions. Further, any diffractive analysis must acknowledge the entanglement of the observer in the experimental ‘apparatus’. Additionally, in reading insights through one another, diffraction must resist making comparisons or putting insights into opposition to one another in traditional dichotomised thinking. In my project, as presented at the conference, I have developed and implemented two strategies which aim to apply diffraction to practice-based research in a rigorous way, consistent with agential realist theory.
Diffractive Questioning
My first strategy for diffractive analysis of research material aimed to implement the agential realist notion of ‘questioning all the way down’, asking the ‘prior questions’ which lie underneath thought: The point is to open up a space for asking the prior question, and then the prior question, and then again, the prior question. In doing so I am trying to provide an ontological opening for taking into account that the questioning is part of the world and the reworlding of the world, in particular ways and not others. This matters greatly; indeed, it is an integral part of mattering otherwise. Questioning goes all the way down. (Barad & Gandorfer, 2021, pp. 17–18)
In an attempt to work with this concept in practical research, I used layers of questioning and prior questioning iteratively in the process of analysis. This iterative use of questions, without statements, is intended to avoid the closing down of meaning, or forcing of meaning into themes, which may occur during more traditional thematic analysis of qualitative data (Mazzei, 2014). Example 1 shows a sample of diffractive questioning of a segment of one of the intra-view transcripts.
Diffractive Questioning
In the left-hand column (excerpt from the intra-view transcript), a student discusses the experience of making a group podcast on the interdisciplinary module. The student explains how leading the podcast led to increased leadership skills, including taking responsibility for a project, gaining confidence and experimenting with different ways of working from their usual creative practice (this participant is on a creative arts degree programme). The second column records the diffractive questions that emerged as I read through the transcript, thinking with agential realism. Baradian concepts such as response-ability, re-turning and diffraction are entangled in this process, as shown in the example. Importantly also, diffractive patterns of difference are prioritised.
In this form of analysis, it is important to note that only questions appear; there are no statements, codes, nor themes, showing the contrast with traditional thematic analysis. The third column, which is completed either simultaneously with the second, or in a subsequent reading, follows Barad in asking the ‘prior questions’ in an attempt to reveal the underlying assumptions and patterns of thought in the first set of questions. Here, although there is openness to all questions, I prioritised two elements of the ‘apparatus’ of my doctoral research: first, consideration of what matters for higher education practice; second, clearly tracing how I, as researcher, am entangled in the process of questioning, in line with the onto-epistemological framework of agential realism outlined above.
My approach to diffractive questioning is one practical implementation of agential literacy (Barad, 2000), which allows for openness of thought and an exploration of meaning suitable for the challenges of the 21st century. As mentioned above, the same analytical technique can be applied in teaching, and I have already published practical lesson plans which allow for its use in interdisciplinary contexts in HE (Jay, 2024). One perhaps inevitable limitation of my approach to diffractive questioning is that the columns of questions are finite; however, the use of questions as a plenary, rather than conclusions, is intended to generate further diffractions to take forward beyond the finite period of the lesson.
Working with Fragments
My second process of diffractive analysis is more experimental. Indeed, here the objective is to conduct a ‘diffractive experiment’, in which diverse fragments of text are juxtaposed, to allow for a diffractive process of reading which is non-linear and which does not limit the reader to one narrative or interpretation. In one of Barad’s key articles on diffraction (Barad, 2014) fragments from different theorists and sources are already incorporated, but they are framed before and afterwards with the author’s explanation in the main text. However, in a later article which is underpinned by Walter Benjamin’s use of text fragments (Barad, 2017), a fully fragmented diffractive experiment is attempted. In this process, Barad uses Benjamin’s notion of ‘constellations of insights which flash up’ to present fragments from diverse texts, across which the reader makes ‘quantum leaps’. Embodying Benjamin’s argument that historical time is non-linear, experimental use of text and punctuation allows the reader to experience the constellation of fragments without necessarily following a linear order (see also Cullen et al., 2024). There is no ‘singular interpretation’; rather, the reader experiences ‘various texts, assembled in constellations suggesting multiple reverberations or diffraction patternings among the fragments’ (Barad, 2017, p. 38). In an attempt to resonate with such patternings, my diffractive experiment juxtaposes fragments from the research process across both Ruskin modules, including: text excerpts from transcripts in both written and audio format; excerpts from the creative artefacts such as podcasts which were present in some of the intra-views; excerpts from module VLE sites; fragments from agential realist theory; fragments from my own thinking processes as recorded in my research journal.
Example 2 shows a prototype for the diffractive experiment. The use of bold and italics allows different strands to emerge, for example, in this sample, bold for students’ contributions, italics for my own reflections; a different font for fragments of Barad’s theory. In this segment, one participant’s experience of interdisciplinarity, going beyond the limited ‘bubbles’ of traditional disciplines, is read in entanglement with Barad’s (2007) pertinent agential realist discussion of entities without exterior edges (p. 135), and my own question from my journal after reading the transcript.
In this way, as with diffractive questioning, my aim is to achieve a diffractive ‘opening up’ of thought, avoiding closing down of meaning which may occur when one interpretation is proposed. One limitation of the diffractive use of fragments as a method of analysis is the risk that no ‘objective’ meaning can be retained. This will be an important point for consideration in the ongoing development of my doctoral research project, which must ultimately draw conclusions for higher education practice. I address this point in the following section, which re-turns (to) the ideas discussed with the audience at the conference presentation.
Diffractive (E)mergings
In the ever-evolving, iterative and infinite ‘worlding’ of agential realism, it does not make sense to draw final conclusions. As Barad puts it, ‘no issue is ever resolved, finally’ (Barad & Gandorfer, 2021, p. 33). For this reason, in place of traditional conclusions and recommendations, I propose the notion of diffractive (e)mergings, a set of diffractive questions which merge the strands of argument in the work, and are at the same time continuously emerging, for the reader to engage with and diffract further. The 2024 conference was certainly a lively and vibrant locus for such diffractive (e)mergings. Intra-active conversations generated ever-evolving questions, further questions and yet more questions to take forward diffractively. In particular, invaluable discussions with colleagues after my presentation allowed me to encounter new and different patterns of thought, across the boundary-making practices of disciplinary space, time and matter. The reader is invited to engage with these (e)mergings and the prior questions they imply:
Could diffractive questioning in the social sciences be read ‘through’ practices from other disciplines, such as recursion in mathematics?
Does diffractive questioning, in its posthumanist framework, create reverberations for AI question prompts?
How does an intra-view take account of social justice and patterns of difference in power?
Can questioning and prior questioning really occur endlessly without the need to provide answers at some point?
This article has attempted to encapsulate the development and ongoing implementation of two rigorous methodological strategies which strive to be coherent with agential realist theory, and its call for a diffractive methodology, in the specific context of an ongoing doctoral research project in higher education. A diffractive methodology, by its nature, cannot be reduced to a fixed formula for analysis: that said, it can be the stimulus for further unfolding and questioning of creative learning processes, with implications for future possibilities in interdisciplinary practice and research.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the Barad Reading Group, part of the Postqualitative Research Collective led by Prof. Karin Murris, for some wonderful conversations. Thanks are also due to my doctoral supervisors, Dr. Elsa Lee and Dr. Steve Connolly.
Ethical Considerations
The study was approved by Anglia Ruskin University Ethics and Social Care SREP (Ethical Clearance Reference Number: ETH2223-10357) on October 17, 2023.
Informed Consent Statement
All participants provided written informed consent prior to participating.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data Availability Statement
The datasets generated during the current study are not available, for ethical reasons.