Our “Getting to know our research centres” series is back! Read all about The Centre for Creative-Relational Inquiry (CCRI) and how to get involved in the following interview with Jonathan Wyatt, one of the centre’s directors.
Would you like to share with us the journey, mission and vision of this research centre?
The first sentence on the CCRI web page is ‘The Centre for Creative-Relational Inquiry (CCRI) fosters innovative qualitative research that places the relational at its heart’, which captures the primary vision of the centre. We then say: “The centre is a home for qualitative research that: is situated, positioned, context-sensitive, personal, experience-near, and embodied; embraces the performative and the aesthetic; engages with the political, the social, and the ethical; problematizes agency, autonomy, and representation; cherishes its relationship with theory, creating concepts as it goes; is dialogical and collaborative; is explicit and curious about the inquiry process itself. So that’s it! CCRI was launched in October 2017 and has members from across the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Edinburgh and from around the world (about 300 in all).
What are the research interests of you research group?
They vary, from detailed, close-up explorations of, for example, therapeutic and pedagogical relationships to the use of the arts and performance as a methodological approach to inquiries that put concepts and theories to work, to research that engages practitioners and the wider public – creatively, relationally – in and with such research. You can see some different Edinburgh projects associated with CCRI here.
What would you say are the main values that lead the work in this group?
You can probably pick up CCRI’s main values in the response to the opening question. The centre is about the relational, as a process, as a creative process.
Would you like to mention some of the work that has been developed here?
I’ll mention a couple of current initiatives:
‘CCRI Community Radio’
There’s a community radio show, which brings scholars together to share their work. You can listen to previous episodes here.
‘Heavier Than Air’
‘Heavier Than Air’ is a theatre play written by Dan Harris (RMIT, Australia) and Stacy Holman Jones (Monash University, Australia) based on transcripts of interviews with queer teachers. On stage, Heavier than Air has been used in university classrooms and has received public performances. CCRI hosted Dan and Stacy, and staged a performance of this play, in 2017, then put on the play again when CCRI hosted the European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry in 2019. Edgar Rodríguez-Dorans, a member of CCRI, produced and directed these performances and has now also produced and directed the play as a film.
How can we get in touch with the research centre and its work?
Website is here. You could consider becoming a member (follow the link on the website)!
Please join on Facebook – ‘CCRI (Sea Cry) University of Edinburgh’ – and Twitter (@CCRIEdinburgh).
Do you have any upcoming events you would like to share with us?
It’s all gone quiet over the summer but the radio show will be resuming in September, plus there will be workshops and seminars beginning again then too. To learn more and join the upcoming First Thursday seminar, presented by Helen Morgan: ‘Whiteness. A Problem for our Time’ click here.
Did you miss our previous interviews with our School’s research centres? Read more about the The Edinburgh Centre for Research on the Experience of Dementia (ECRED), Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy Centre and The Centre for Homelessness and Inclusion Health.
