Contact: vagaboundsresearch@gmail.com

Vagab(o/u)nds Research is a research collective designed to advance original enquiries in the context of a semi-material corpus in which the distinctions between matter and spirit are less profound than is imagined in most orthodox academic frameworks. Vagab(o/u)nds Research is an adventure in a new kind of interdisciplinarity that explores the intellectual mobility that the semi-material corpus affords, and the routines and protocols of significant original research. It is designed to provide collaborative support for research projects by individuals and teams which insist upon intellectual mobility within and between disciplinary silos to resolve important outstanding questions for the arts and humanities.

To shape this adventure, Vagab(o/u)nds Research draws upon a thirty-year track-record of cognate doctoral and post-doctoral research involving scholars, artists, and archivists in the UK, Europe, and the USA. In various iterations it has enabled the sustained collaboration of individuals, universities, and archives who, over the years, have recognised the virtues of multimodal approaches to resolving apparently intransigent disciplinary problems. The outcomes of this work have been shared in publications, exhibitions, films, and social impact. While the insights and research methodologies have been applied in specific educational and healthcare settings shaping experience and impacting on policy.

In this new incarnation as Vagab(o/u)nds Research, the project comprises a core group of approximately 20 researchers, and a community of alumni and ‘friends’ who provide the substantial structural foundation for the adventure. Its semi-material offering is a programme of virtual monthly ateliers in which ongoing research is presented, and salons in which individual progress is shared. While a material dimension is met with an art press and a network of artisanal studios in Portugal, Germany, the USA and the UK open to researchers with the support of the “Friends of Vagab(o/u)nds Research”.