Professor Lalitha Vasudevan’s latest book, titled Collaborative Research in Theory and Practice: The Poetics of Letting Go (2022), is a text that reflects on the practice of ‘letting go’ as an approach to collaborate research. The edited volume was curated by Professor Vasudevan and colleagues Kate Pahl of Manchester Metropolitan University and Richard Steadman-Jones of the University of Sheffield. The authors use the concepts of The authors use the concepts of “letting go,” which refers to “the recognition that research is always in a state of becoming,” and “poetics,” which speaks to a sort of research that is unconventional and might renew how we understand research, as the framework for the book. With chapters such as “Embodiment,” uses academic prose and other more lyrical and experimental writing styles to explore “how we work and the artfulness of that work in a research project” (pg. viii).
Collaborative Research in Theory and Practice speaks directly to Professor Vasudevan’s work as a researcher and as the Vice Dean for Digital Innovation and Managing Director of the Teachers College Digital Futures Institute. A pioneer in the field of multimodal scholarship, Professor Vasudevan has spent her academic career working with youth and engaging them in art and media-based research. She often prioritizes participatory methods, whereas interlocutors are seen as co-researchers rather than research subjects.
Described as “smart, beautiful, magical and fierce,” Collaborative Research in Theory and Practice: The Poetics of Letting Go is intended to highlight an approach to research that prioritizes arts-based and multimodal ways of knowing. Members of the MST community, and the TC community as a whole, have learned a great deal from Professor Vasudevan and her truly masterful approaches to collaborative research. Having so many of her reflections, as well as those of her collaborators, in this book gives many others the opportunity to learn from her. Her work is a deeply necessary intervention, promoting a move toward scholarship that values the knowledge-making practices of non-academic communities. We look forward to seeing how this work continues to shift how we understand research!