Practice research in England

Bulley, James and Şahin, Özden. 2021. Practice Research - Report 1: What is practice research? and Report 2: How can practice research be shared?. Practice Research Advisory Group UK (PRAG-UK), London. https://doi.org/10.23636/1347

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Publication date: 1 April 2021

Two reports, published as part of a collaborative post-doctorate with Dr Özden Şahin on the subject of practice research in England, commissioned by the Practice Research Advisory Group UK (PRAG-UK) and funded by Research England. Published by PRAG-UK and the British Library.

The two Bulley-Şahin reports are published by the Practice Research Advisory Group UK (PRAG-UK) and are available open access here.

In response to the conversations that have arisen across the world surrounding practice research, these reports seek to clarify the debates, discussions and promise of the practice research community in England.

These reports:

• provide insights and recommendations to practice researchers, and to the organisations and professionals that support practice research;

• demonstrate that practice research enriches not just higher education, but learning and knowledge acquisition in other contexts including creative industries, scientific settings, non-profit organisations and independent bodies.

Practice researchers are discovering new ways of generating and sharing research, embracing non-traditional types of publication. In a world whose day-to-day is rife with mixed-media and non-textual information, it is time for academic research to embrace non-textual media and formats, and the vast ever-developing array of novel communicative technologies that are used in our everyday lives.

We have written these reports with the aim of reaching a diverse range of audiences, from students to researchers inside and outside of academia, from research support professionals to senior university research managers, from independent and non profit research organisations to those individuals and committees that weigh and decide policy and funding in future years.

Writing in the foreword to What is practice research?, Steven Hill, Director of Research at Research England says: “Practice research is a new way of thinking about and engaging in research and so needs new structures and systems to maximise its impact within and outside the academy.”

He adds: “These reports are a seminal contribution that draws together current thinking relating to practice research in all its diversity. They provide consistent language to talk about practice research across multiple disciplinary contexts and clarify the challenges that need to be addressed to ensure the full potential of practice research. Notably, the reports span and provide linkages between the theoretical and practical.” 

“This range is essential. If there are to be better tools for hosting and communicating practice research, they need to align with the ways practice researchers conceptualise their work.”

Practice research has a history stretching as far back as the earliest human experiments: practice is a method of discovering and sharing new findings about the world that surrounds us. In recent years, scholarly communication has undergone a series of changes that have led to a broadening of the landscape of academic research, due in part to the emergence of practice research in the academy. The formulation and dissemination of practice research affords an important opportunity for researchers in England across all research disciplines, offering a research field that conveys ways of knowing from practice, operating within, across and beyond disciplines in manners that go far beyond traditional research types. In practice research, forms of sensory, tacit and embodied knowledge can be conveyed, and its sharing presents an opportunity for the modernising and revitalising of research communication, uncovering novel dissemination routes in the digital era.

(from an article about the reports found here)