Reflection on the comparison between research-articulation and research-exposition

This reflection grew out of my ongoing work on how creative practice is identified, communicated and evaluated as research. It compares my own developing model of research articulation with the concept of research exposition used by the Journal for Artistic Research, asking whether these approaches are best understood as alternatives or as complementary ways of making practice research visible, reviewable and open to encounter.

What becomes clear when placing my own process of research articulation alongside the approach developed by the Journal for Artistic Research is that both are attempting to resolve the same underlying problem—the status of practice as research—but they do so through quite different orientations, and with different implications for form, evaluation, and knowledge.

At the most fundamental level, the distinction sits between what we might call articulation and exposition. In my own work, the emphasis has been on articulation as a means of making research legible. The templates I’ve developed—whether PRP structures or research statements—are designed to stabilise the work, to draw out its research questions, methods, insights, and contribution in a way that can be clearly communicated, assessed, and, crucially, recognised within institutional frameworks such as REF. The underlying assumption is that practice may be complex, tacit, and multi-layered, but it becomes research through a process of structured clarification.

By contrast, JAR’s model of exposition begins from a different premise. Here, research is not clarified after the fact but is constituted through the way it is presented. The arrangement of media, the navigation of the work, the relationship between elements—these are not supplementary to the research but are the site in which it happens. Knowledge is not extracted and summarised; it is encountered. Where my approach seeks to stabilise, JAR’s seeks to enact.

This difference becomes more pronounced when we consider structure. My templates are deliberately structured. They break the work down into identifiable components—context, aims, methods, findings—not as a bureaucratic exercise but as a way of ensuring that the research can be traced, understood, and evaluated. This is particularly important in pedagogical contexts and in systems where comparability matters. JAR, on the other hand, resists predefined structure almost entirely. Expositions may be non-linear, media-rich, even disorienting. There is no requirement for explicit research questions or conventional methodological framing. And yet, this is not an absence of rigour. Rather, coherence is expected to emerge through the internal logic of the exposition itself, not through adherence to external formats.

A similar divergence can be seen in the role of criteria. In my own model, criteria are explicit and operational. They provide a scaffold for both making and evaluating work. They can be taught, applied, and refined. In JAR, criteria function more as prompts than as rules.

Reviewers are encouraged to consider aspects such as contextualisation, methodology, or clarity, but always with the caveat that their absence may not be a flaw. The question is not simply whether something is present, but whether its absence is detrimental—or, indeed, meaningful. This creates a much more fluid evaluative space, one that privileges judgement over compliance.

This feeds directly into how each approach understands knowledge. In my framework, knowledge tends to be articulated, often retrospectively. There is an acknowledgement that practice generates insight, but that insight needs to be drawn out, synthesised, and

expressed in a form that can circulate within academic discourse. This inevitably aligns with existing expectations around research communication. JAR, by contrast, allows knowledge to remain embedded within the exposition. It may be implicit, experiential, or non-propositional. It does not need to be translated into conventional academic language in order to count. The risk here, of course, is opacity. The corresponding risk in my own approach is that articulation can feel “bolted on,” as if the research is being retrofitted into an academic frame.

These differences are also reflected in the respective approaches to peer review and evaluation. My work tends towards transparency and clarity in evaluation—towards frameworks that can support consistent judgement, whether in marking, supervision, or research assessment. JAR’s model is explicitly discursive. Reviews are multi-voiced, often divergent, and not expected to converge on a single position. The editorial role is not to enforce consensus but to interpret and negotiate these differences. Evaluation, in this context, becomes less about arriving at a definitive judgement and more about developing the work through critical engagement.

The role of writing is another point of divergence. In my model, writing remains central. It is the primary means through which research is articulated and made legible. In JAR, writing is just one medium among many. It may be present, but it is not privileged. An exposition could, in principle, operate entirely through image, sound, or interaction, provided it successfully exposes practice as research.

And yet, for all these differences, there is a significant shared ground. Both approaches reject the idea that practice alone is sufficient—that documentation or presentation of work is enough. Both insist that practice must operate as a mode of inquiry, that it must engage with questions of knowledge, meaning, or understanding. Both are, in different ways, attempting to move beyond the persistent practice–theory divide that has shaped much of the discourse in this field.

Where the two approaches diverge most productively is in their respective strengths. My framework is particularly effective in contexts that require clarity, transferability, and accountability: REF submissions, PhD supervision, teaching, and institutional evaluation. It provides a common language and a shared structure that can support both making and assessing work. JAR’s model, by contrast, is better suited to experimental, exploratory, and formally innovative practices. It allows for a more expansive understanding of how knowledge might be produced and communicated, one that is not constrained by existing academic conventions.

Rather than positioning these as competing models, it is more useful to see them as complementary. What begins to emerge is the possibility of a two-stage or dual-layer approach. Exposition, in the JAR sense, allows the research to be encountered in its own terms—as a practice-based, media-rich, experiential form of knowledge. Articulation, in my sense, then provides a means of translating that experience into a form that can be communicated, evaluated, and situated within broader research contexts.

From this perspective, my own framework might be understood less as an alternative to JAR and more as a bridge—a translation layer between artistic research as it is practised and experienced, and the institutional systems within which it must often be recognised and assessed. That, I think, is where the real value of this comparison lies.