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Abstract

In this epistolary paper, two landscape architects identify and analyse different roles that correspondence has played in their academia-industry collaboration. Their e-mail-correspondence has functioned as (1) process catalyst, (2) tool for data collection, (3) a method to co-create understanding of the subject matter, (4) a medium to level out differences in the project participants' background (correspondence as 'the great equalizer'), and (5) a medium to get to know each other and one-self. This paper, which performs what it writes about by taking the form of correspondence, is inserting itself in a steadily growing body of methodological literature on letter-writing and correspondence with a a dual aim. First, it intends to introduce correspondence to the palette of research methods in fields such as the authors' home discipline that do not, or at least rarely, work with correspondence, but could fruitfully do so. Second, it aims at inspiring researchers from disciplines in which correspondence is readily used and accepted as a research method to employ it in new contexts and with new purposes, primarily for fostering collaboration in research projects with complex (multi-, inter- or transdisciplinary) constellations and demanding dynamics.

Keywords

arts-based methods; correspondence; explorative methods; landscape architecture; letters; transdisciplinary research

Published in

International Journal of Qualitative Methods
2025, volume: 24, article number: 16094069251406144
Publisher: SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC

SLU Authors

UKÄ Subject classification

Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified

Publication identifier

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069251406144

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/145537