Beyond Text: Using Collage as a Rigorous Visual Method in PhD Research

In this session you will be introduced to collage as a rigorous, creative, and reflexive visual research method that can be mobilised across all stages of the doctoral research process. Together, we will demystify collage as a scholarly tool and explore its potential as a legitimate method for research design, data generation, data analysis, and dissemination.
By engaging with collage practices, you will have the opportunity to develop new ways of thinking, seeing, and communicating research that extend beyond text-dominant approaches, and offer increased potential to foreground the voices of with potentially marginalised populations through arts-based research.
The session will be delivered as an interactive, face-to-face methodological workshop designed specifically for PhD researchers. In tandem with short guidance on relevant theory from the organisers, you will take part in hands-on creative activity, role-play, structured reflection, and facilitated group discussion. The face-to-face setting reflects collage is a tactile, relational, and embodied practice that benefits from shared space, material engagement, and peer interaction.
During the workshop, you will discuss the adaptation of materials for both in-person and online research contexts, and will explore example protocols, participant prompts, and digital collage platforms.
The emphasis throughout the session will be on learning-by-doing, collective sense-making, and methodological confidence-building. Because the session focuses on with both conceptual understanding and practical tools, you should leave armed with the confidence to immediately apply collage techniques in your PhD research.
By the end of the session, you should be able to:

Critically explain and situate collage as a methodological practice within qualitative, participatory, and arts-based research traditions.

Apply collage techniques to support research planning, including problem formulation, researcher positionality, and conceptual mapping within their own doctoral projects.

Use collage as a method of data collection and analysis, demonstrating reflexive engagement with complexity, ambiguity, and affective dimensions of research.

Design and justify collage-based approaches for disseminating research findings to a range of audiences (e.g. academic, policy, the general public).

Organisers:

• Dr Andrea Tonner
• Dr Holly Porteous

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Host or Publisher Scottish Graduate School of Social Science DTP