Research

Embroidery artwork — ‘Mandrary miharo’ (weaving together), during a participant observation activity, a practice typically undertaken to complete a mat quickly. Photograph by Sana Arline.

As a researcher I am interested in transdisciplinary, multimodal ways of researching craft and craftspeople’s experiences.

My PhD research was undertaken in the community of Sainte Luce in southeast Madagascar, with craftswomen who were building embroidery livelihoods as an alternative to ancestral reed-weaving. It drew on craft, textiles and material culture anthropology to challenge sustainable development projects that artificially separate craft practice from the lives of the communities in which it is socially embedded. Using craftspeople’s perspectives, it explored the social, creative, practical and ethical challenges of building new craft expertise and communities and renegotiating relationships with ancestral processes.

I am interested in experimental, multimodal and craft-forward research methodologies that resonate with research participants’ understandings, make space for complex ideas to emerge and create meaningful dialogues between researcher and participants. During my PhD I developed an arts-based approach that drew on ethnographic methods and creative practice, using drawing and making as tools for translation between different ways of knowing and thinking. I developed a strategy I called ‘reinhabiting the research space’ by audio recording research activities that used craft processes and then listening to recordings during the analysis phase while engaging in the same crafts. Using making to shape thinking generated layered and alternative reflections compared with traditional transcription alone. I drew on Ingold’s (2010) conceptualisation of a meshwork in which lines can be traced to increase understandings, to analyse the success of different elements of the research process and visualise the interactions and roles of different research methods.

Nesiteni ironing mahampy embroidery — Nesiteni, ironing her embroidery ‘Mangala mahampy’ (Collecting mahampy), 2019.

Woman carrying mahampy and baby — A weaver carrying mahampy reeds back to the village after collecting them from the swamps surrounding the forest.

Jacqueline draining dyed raffia — Weaver Ravolasoa Jacqueline dyeing raffia for stitching mats together, 2019."

Meshwork Drawing

A drawing to understand part of the research meshwork, a way of visualising and analysing the complexity of the research, based on Ingold’s (2010) conceptualisation of a meshwork in which to explore by following lines alongside others.

Drawing to translate weaving structures kakany — The use of drawing to translate between different craft and cultural ways of knowing during discussion of complex weaving structures, in this case the ‘kakany’.

Fisherman Ramahara stitching lobster pots together. The pots were bought, flat-pack, from traders from the Tsitongambarika mountains since the materials had become functionally extinct in the forests around Sainte Luce, 2019.