Applications of Arts-Based Research in Environmental Social Science

Document Type

Presentation

Date of Original Version

3-27-2026

Abstract

Artistic endeavors offer pathways to question, appreciate, examine, and critique people’s relationships with the natural environment. For thousands of years, artwork has shaped our understanding of the natural world through a variety of genres because art connects us to our senses, values, intellect, emotions, and spirituality. The growing field of Arts-Based Research (ABR) systematically uses the artistic process as a method of inquiry to co-produce knowledge about how people experience the world. Through an iterative process of questioning, making, and knowing, ABR participants are able to express viewpoints that traditional qualitative and quantitive methods may not fully be able to capture. This is especially relevant in environmental social science contexts, as ABR can call out environmental injustices, give discursive power to marginalized communities, and spark collective action around environmental issues. Accessibility is also central to ABR, both in how the participatory artmaking process breaks down power hierarchies, and in how results are disseminated through artistic products. By using examples from both my artistic practice and academic career, I will demonstrate how the ABR process is directly tied to a researcher’s identity, both as a scientist and as an artist. Arts-based researchers like me are committed to answering specific questions while shifting the larger academic culture to value diverse epistemologies and utilize creative methods. While I am in the early stages of developing my doctoral research at URI, I am interested in using ABR methodologies like collage-based inquiry and autoethnography to leverage my own identity as a queer Black woman and examine communities’ relationships with marine environments.

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