Dirty Methods is a collaborative project by ZAMBLAMS. The authors are part of The Fourchettes – Critical Methods in Technocultures, a collective of colleagues and friends from various disciplinary backgrounds who came together in 2015 to share observations about pushing digital research methods in media and communications in more critical directions.
We wanted to find a way to acknowledge our collective authorship in a way that would not collapse us into the first named author as is commonly used in academic citation. We were inspired by Lilly Nguyen, Sophie Toupin, and Shaowen Bardzell, writing as SSL Nagbot, and their “‘hack’ of academic authorship” (2016, n.p.) meant precisely to disrupt the expected structure and hierarchies that commonly rank and value academic credit. Rather than attempting to create a pervasive mathematics of contribution, we have followed the lead of SSL Nagbot and created the pseudonym ZAMBLAMS.
ZAMBLAMS includes: Alison Harvey, Andrea Zeffiro, Koen Leurs, MaryElizabeth (ME) Luka, Mélanie Millette, Rena Bivens, and Tamara Shepherd.
More content to come throughout 2024, including recorded interviews and exercises to use in-class.
Thanks
The creation of this resource would not have been possible without the rest of the original Fourchettes group, and our respective universities over time (including Calgary, Carleton, Leicester (UK), McMaster, Quebec à Montréal, Toronto, Utrecht (NL), and York). It would not have appeared on this website without support from the Critical Digital Methods Institute at UTSC, and the Knowledge Media Design Institute in the Faculty of Information at U of T, and from the many partners involved in the original Fourchettes projects. Finally, we want to thank the students (most of whom have since graduated!) Abigail Seymour, Samantha Younan, Trevor Cross, and web designer Jermaine Williams, for their valuable contributions in making this website come to life.
Copyright
We invite you to use the Dirty Methods material. We would really like to hear when and when you use it, and how it went.
Please make sure to acknowledge the authors (ZAMBLAMS) and content per the following Creative Commons license.
-
- Under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license, users are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
- Attribution: Users must give appropriate credit to the authors and source of the content
- Non-Commercial: Dirty Methods material may not be used for commercial purposes
- Derivatives: users that decide to change or build upon the material from this website may not distribute the reformed material
- All information that is derived from the Dirty Methods content is required to acknowledge ZAMBLAMS and the organizations represented as the original source.
- The Open Access policy does not apply to third-party content. Anyone wishing to use content that belongs to the organizations on the website is responsible for understanding and contacting the right holder(s) for their permission.
Browse Dirty Methods Content
Chapters
- Introduction
- Becoming Researchers: The Dirty Business of Training Research Methods
- The Glorious Messiness of Methodology: Speculation, Intra-actions… and Glitter
- The Curious Life of Social Justice in Academia
- From Process to Policy and Back Again
- On Power and Relationships: Making Kin with Research Ethics
- Conclusions
Vignettes
- friendship
- white authors
- movement of money
- shifting governance policies and practices
- stay uncomfortable
- vulnerabilities
- epilogue – on cat herding
Interviews
- Coming Soon!
Exercises
- Coming Soon!