17 - Beyond the brick wall: transdisciplinary and creative research through Scholarly Personal Narrative and Lilyology

Summary

A spider created an intricate web in the outside corner of my writing room window. I see her perched in the centre when I look up from my desk. That the delicate legs support the large, round abdomen the size of a small stone amazes me. Throughout the year, she goes about her business, and I go about mine here in the high desert of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the south- western United States. The seasons of the year serve as a backdrop to the web's silhouette. The web frames the cumulus clouds of summer as they drift across bright blue sky and the bright green leaves and clusters of magenta flowers of a New Mexico locust tree just beyond the fence. The leaves of that same tree turned gold, rust, and red with the crispness of autumn beyond the web. When snow begins to fall in soft flurries to announce winter's arrival, I wondered at the spider's ability to survive. I still do not understand; just know that I am grateful when the air warms again in the late- arriving spring of this altitude. The spider's web maintained its shape, structure, and strength through the seasons. As the frame of web connects the seasons outside the window, so connective power has much to teach us as we delve into transdisciplinary and creative research methods.

Transdisciplinary and creative methods

Transdisciplinary research and creative methods honour complexities. These complex dynamics encourage us to move beyond discipline- specific and isolated analyses and into rich and deep research, as ‘only a thoroughly transdisciplinary perspective can navigate such issues, which are at once technological, cultural, ethical, political, economic, and ecological’ (Wells, 2013, p 126). This chapter explores the creative method of Scholarly Personal Narrative (SPN) (Nash and Bradley, 2011) and theoretical framework of Lilyology (Blair, 2015). SPN falls under the overarching umbrella of narrative inquiry (Creswell and Poth, 2017). The narrative method ‘begins with the experiences as expressed in lived and told stories of individuals’ (p 70). Clandinin and Connelly (2004) detail ‘experience as central to the epistemology and ontology of narrative inquiry’ (p 38). Using narrative methods, researchers weave their lived experiences and understandings into the research. Narrative and story convey the findings of qualitative research.