How can post-qualitative research cross the practice and policy bridge to effect – and affect – (global) change and ‘real world’ impact? How can transdisciplinary scholars use magical realism as an entry point to think differently about post-qualitative approaches when applied to policy and practice? 

Join Dr Marisa de Andrade – Joint Winner of the 2023 International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry Book Award for Public Health, Humanities and Magical Realism: A Creative-Relational Approach to Researching Human Experience – as she takes a deep dive into how post-qualitative approaches can influence the policy agenda. In this playful yet practical session, we’ll show how it is possible to embrace the complexity of “real-world” social issues, reject the categorisation and labels that exist within traditional methodological frameworks and position our work in practice and policymaking circles. We’ll work through “live” examples of how we’re doing this from our £2.5 million UK Research and Innovation consortium grant tackling inequalities and improving health through access to creativity, culture, nature and community “REALITIES in health disparities: researching evidence-based alternatives in living, imaginative, traumatised, integrated, embodied systems”. Sprinkling magic along the way, we’ll explore how different forms of knowledge are currently informing the development of policy and practice principles addressing the diverse needs, lived and felt experiences of individuals and communities facing homelessness, imprisonment, displacement, addiction and ill health.