Deleuze-inspired action research in the university: Mobilising Deleuzian concepts to rethink research on the reflective writing practices of student teachers

This article offers an insight into the process and potential of Deleuze-inspired action research. It draws on a classroom action research (CAR) project that critically reconceptualises practices of reflective writing in teacher education, including the widespread use of the ‘professional learning journal’ as a resource to facilitate reflection on practice. Students following a teacher education programme in England took part in an innovative mode of engagement with texts, including their learning journals, drawing on the Deleuzo-Guattarian notion of the text as an agent that acts outside of itself. The process was called ‘implicated reading’. An example of a teaching and learning intervention, in the form of a seminar transcript, is offered as an illustration of how Deleuzian theory and philosophy can inspire and shape innovations in practice. The transcript also serves as an opportunity to reimagine the ways in which data and data analysis are conceptualised and practiced in action research (AR) projects. Data is (re)conceptualised as agentic, rather than inert or indifferent. Synthesis is privileged over analysis so that the transcript acts as a provocation to rethink the relation between theory and data, asking what is made possible when these are ‘plugged into’ one another to raise questions that otherwise would have remained unthought. Ultimately, the article offers a worked example of what happens when action researchers take up the challenge of working and thinking within a Deleuzian ontology that seeks to maintain the plurality and potentialities of AR in practice

The injecting ‘event’: harm reduction beyond the human

Since the 1980s, the primary public health response to injecting drug use in the UK has been one of harm reduction. That is, reducing the harms associated with drug use without necessarily reducing consumption itself. Rooted in a post-Enlightenment idea of rationalism, interventions are premised on the rational individual who, given the right means, will choose to avoid harm. This lies in stark contrast to dominant addiction models that pervade popular images of the ‘out of control’ drug user, or worse, ‘junkie’. Whilst harm reduction has undoubtedly had vast successes, including challenging the otherwise pathologising and often stigmatising model of addiction, I argue that it has not gone far enough in addressing aspects of drug use that go beyond ‘rational’ and ‘human’ control. Drawing on my doctoral research with people who inject drugs, conducted in London, UK, this paper highlights the role of the injecting ‘event’, which far from being directed or controlled by a pre-defined individual or ‘body’ was composed by a fragile assemblage of bodies, human and nonhuman. Furthermore, in line with the ‘event’s’ heterogeneous and precarious make-up, multiple ways of ‘becoming’ through these events were possible. I look here at these ‘becomings’ as both stabilising and destabilising ways of being in the world, and argue that we need to pay closer attention to these events and what people are actually in the process of becoming in order to enact more accountable and ‘response-able’ harm reduction

Ecological connectivity in the three-dimensional urban green volume using waveform airborne lidar

This is the final version. Available on open access from Nature Research via the DOI in this record.The movements of organisms and the resultant flows of ecosystem services are strongly shaped by landscape connectivity. Studies of urban ecosystems have relied on two-dimensional (2D) measures of greenspace structure to calculate connectivity. It is now possible to explore three-dimensional (3D) connectivity in urban vegetation using waveform lidar technology that measures the full 3D structure of the canopy. Making use of this technology, here we evaluate urban greenspace 3D connectivity, taking into account the full vertical stratification of the vegetation. Using three towns in southern England, UK, all with varying greenspace structures, we describe and compare the structural and functional connectivity using both traditional 2D greenspace models and waveform lidar-generated vegetation strata (namely, grass, shrubs and trees). Measures of connectivity derived from 3D greenspace are lower than those derived from 2D models, as the latter assumes that all vertical vegetation strata are connected, which is rarely true. Fragmented landscapes that have more complex 3D vegetation showed greater functional connectivity and we found highest 2D to 3D functional connectivity biases for short dispersal capacities of organisms (6 m to 16 m). These findings are particularly pertinent in urban systems where the distribution of greenspace is critical for delivery of ecosystem services.This work was funded under the NERC Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Sustainability (BESS) thematic programme for the ‘Fragments Functions and Flows in Urban Ecosystems’ project (Reference: NE/J015237/1; http://bess-urban.group.shef.ac.uk/). The waveform ALS data were acquired by the NERC Airborne Research and Survey Facility (ARSF) and the team from the ARSF Data Analysis Node at Plymouth Marine Laboratory is acknowledged for undertaking initial ALS processing

Affirmative critique as minor qualitative critical inquiry: A storying of a becoming critical engagement with what happens

In response to the evolving nature of scholarly exchange and collaboration, University of California Press allows its authors to post preprints and postprints on authors' personal websites, and within institutional repositories. You may use the Publisher-generated PDF, and you must display the following Publisher's Statement in tandem with posting: Published as [Andersen, Camilla Eline. (2017). Affirmative critique as minor qualitative critical inquiry: A storying of a becoming critical engagement with what happens. International review of Qualitative Research, 10(4), 430-449. doi: http://dx.doi.org10.1525/irqr.2017.10.4.430]. © [2017] by [the Regents of the University of California/Sponsoring Society or Association]. Copying and permissions notice: Authorization to copy this content beyond fair use (as specified in Sections 107 and 108 of the U. S. Copyright Law) for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by [the Regents of the University of California/on behalf of the Sponsoring Society] for libraries and other users, provided that they are registered with and pay the specified fee via Rightslink® or directly with the Copyright Clearance Center (http://www.copyright.com/).publishedVersio