To know, understand and learn the placemaking practices that are often invisible, hidden and mostly taken for granted (because they are of the body and not easily verbalised), an embodied, affective and relational approach is needed. The innovative practice research entanglements of methodologies and methods, underpinned by new materialism, that can enable the exploration of the agency of matter and advance vitalist frameworks are presented and discussed in this chapter. Through moving beyond the problem-focused approach we can work the intraactions of theory with practice and practice with theory to develop new approaches to making and remaking the processes and outputs of practice research. This approach can also position these research practices politically as it pays attention to the complex materiality of bodies immersed in social relations of power.

The Practice Research of Place

New materialism (Alaimo and Heckman 2008; Barad 2007; Braidotti 2013; Barrett and Bolt 2013; Coole and Frost 2010; Heckman 2010) calls theorists to emphasise materiality in research. Furthermore, it calls for embodied, affective, relational methodologies requiring new ways of approaching and doing research. As Barad states, we need to be

As a way of exploring the entanglements of matter and subjectivity, new materialism is an approach to research that can emphasise and open up ways to understand the complex materiality of bodies immersed in social relations of power (Dolphijn and van der Tuin 2012). However, it is crucial that we do not allow materialist frameworks to de-emphasise the agency of people and politics, and in attempting to know, understand and learn the ‘mingle and mangle’ (Bolt 2012: 3) of the practices of socio-material life to flatten ontologies. The epistemological underpinnings of new materialism support a way of approaching research; a methodology that rejects dualistic separations of mind from body and of nature from culture. From this position this methodology can support the questioning of how matter comes to matter and the intraactions of matter with bodies, making with thinking.