Lost in Translation

Abstract

The chapter examines the role of practice-related research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. It will extend existing debates regarding the academic rigour of such methodologies as arts-based research and consider their impact on future research culture, using Zen arts as an example of a subject of study within such a methodological framing. It also discusses complimentary methods used by Zen arts researchers such as ethnography to examine why qualitative techniques are not only useful but imperative in the study of such fields. While practice is the key to Zen arts research, neither of the practice-related method types, practice-led or practice-based, currently defined describes how such practice or the writing function in PhD investigations, where together such components are the subject of investigation as well as the method of research and presentation. The chapter thus suggests an additional category of PRR, “practice-reflexive,” when describing such research whose focus is on the distinction of (or the lack thereof) the written exegesis and the notional artefact.