Dialogues on Agential Realism: Engaging in Worldings through Research Practice

Dialogues on Agential Realism is built up around dialogues with key scholars in the field: Magdalena Górska, Astrid Schrader, Elizabeth de Freitas, Ericka Johnson and Karen Barad. The book investigates agential realist-inspired research practices and provides illustrations of what response-able knowledge production may involve.

Based on thorough readings of the scholars’ work, careful dialogues concerning the challenges, messiness, thrill and inventiveness of research processes are brought to the fore. The dialogues with Górska, Schrader, de Freitas and Johnson were based on specific research projects, which drew inspiration from agential realist theory, in combination with the ideas of other thinkers. The dialogue with Barad focuses on the continuous development of agential realism. In addition, the book consists of a chapter that introduces agential realism and a closing chapter focusing on some of the main insights agential realism has to offer in relation research practices.

The book offers new entry points to agential realism and the conduct of research. It may vitalize methodological prudence and creativity and spark new and previously unimagined ways of thinking and doing research. As such, it will be an essential resource to both newcomers and scholars and students who are already familiar with the theory of agential realism.

Malou Juelskjær is an associate professor in social psychology at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark.

Helle Plauborg is an associate professor at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark.

Stine W. Adrian is an associate professor in techno-anthropology at Aalborg University, Denmark.