Art Psychotherapy is a psychological therapy that uses artistic processes to facilitate change within a therapeutic relationship. The translation of clinical process into quantifiable change to health conditions is required to support funding for Art Psychotherapy services in healthcare. Providing research results to support evidence-based practice remains a priority for the professional bodies overseeing the development of the profession. However, discourse on the multi-faceted digital factors influencing the development of the profession have been under researched. For example, the recent proliferation of Large Language Models, such as Chat GTP, and concurrent debates on the implications for higher education, alongside the legacy of the Covid 19 pandemic, rendering many therapeutic relationships on-screen, have intensified the need for inquiry into the interplay between human and digital forces in the training of future researchers and capacities to critique the production of data within healthcare paradigms. The global crisis of late capitalism also compounds this issue, prompting broader questions for Art Psychotherapy training programmes for modelling sustainable practice for future practitioners and researchers in the field. To address these issues of the changing social terrain of clinical practices mediated through digital media, this paper presents a posthuman feminist approach to pedagogy in the Research Methodology module of an Art Psychotherapy Training Programme and develops a theoretical model of data analysis and data synthesis employing posthuman methodologies. The affordances of digital technologies at the intersections of pedagogy and arts-based research are described through workshop examples as enacted empirical explorations.

In the first section of this paper, we will provide an overview of recent literature that uses a posthuman model of pedagogies, the rationale and context of the theorisation. The second section will take a closer look at the relevance of feminist theory within a posthuman paradigm, before offering examples of arts-based practices in posthuman pedagogies. Finally, theorisation anchored in materials produced as part of a research seminar in art psychotherapy will offer insights into the relevance and applicability of the theorisation.

The introduction of the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) published under the 2016 to 2019 Conservative government (Great Britain. Department for Education 2017) and the broader schematics of the Research Excellence Framework (2024) prioritising ‘accountability for public investment’ and ‘reputational yardsticks’ ultimately intensify the relationship between individual and public investment, public image and the performance of teaching practices in terms of impact and measurability (Bayley 2016: 44). Within this economic, educators and students sit together with ethical tensions between the duty to transmit and to receive information increasingly optimised and streamlined towards a culture of achieving individual grade points, targets and securement of employment, and broader questions of a collective social bond, environmental sustainability and unknowable or unimaginable futures (Bayley 2016: 44). All of this makes for productive and cultured citizens supported by societal regulation and policy.

Whilst the productive, optimised individual in essence sounds like an ethical agenda towards improving society and its benefits, this paper will address some of the tensions with the margins, where collective broadening of possibilities can be nurtured through a posthuman critical pedagogy lens, offering a radical inclusive ethics based on nuanced inquiry and transdisciplinarity. A posthuman critical theorisation emphasises an ethics of encounter (Lemieux 2021; Lock 2019) between the material-discursive conditions of teaching and learning (Lemieux 2021), human/animal relations (Lock 2019) and within posthuman digital spaces (Taylor and Bayley 2019). Radical education employs strategies of resistance to Eurocentric territorialisation inspired by posthuman pedagogical models. For example, through Taylor and Pacini-Ketchabaw’s (2018) common worlds framework, which addresses issues of interspecies and intergenerational environmental justice, and Lenz-Taguchi and Hultman’s (2010) relational materialist approach, which considers the child as emerging in a relational field with non-human forces, the dynamisms of craft are invoked, illuminating the phenomena at play rather than regulated static outcomes (Lemieux 2021: 1). In this context, given the emphasis on opening up possibilities, arts and performance pedagogies can become centrifugal forces in enabling knowledge-making practices that produce new knowledge from the margins rather than reconstituting knowns. This is not a disruptive reaction, but can bring an engaged anticipation and excitement for the unexpected. For example, Postma (2016: 320) describes a pedagogy of joyful participation and mobilisation of minoritarian powers based on their own desire-production, cultivating a posthuman subject orientated less towards individual freedom, autonomy and emancipation, and rather an openness to experience and the capacity to be affected and to affect others.

This paper builds on the philosophies of Deleuze and Guattari (1977) to reconceptualise art psychotherapy research pedagogy as a form of ecological encounter. By adopting an ecological perspective, it engages with Guattari’s notion of an ethical futurity (Colebrook 2020), a continually evolving vision realised through interdisciplinary entanglements that span techne, subject, sciences, humanities and arts. Within this framework, the paper examines how posthuman feminist pedagogies can transform participatory research seminars acting as examples of practice from Brunel University’s Art Psychotherapy MA Programme, cultivating a broader and more integrative understanding of learning and knowledge creation.

The first author is a lecturer on the MA Art Psychotherapy at Brunel. The second author is a Professor of Practice and Consultant in Arts Therapies and led on the original design of the MA programme. Both authors are art psychotherapists from a healthcare background and co-designed the research module.

This paper was produced from a discourse between the authors, between the fields of research, art psychotherapy practice and pedagogies fostering emergent conceptual structures at the intersections of social and disciplinary dialogues. One aim was to bridge the subject-object divide within the discourse to explore conceptual apparatuses shaped by shared purposes, roles, tasks, and future-oriented visions. This type of discourse making has been, conceptualised by Deleuze and Guattari (1977: 11) as establishing a virtual ‘recording surface’ constituting ontological congruence across researcher, data, technology and artefact bodies, with the aim of deterritorialising elements to form a cohesive relational whole as process led rather than having a desired outcome beyond discovery itself. The idea of the ‘recording surface’ was originally posited by Freud as a language evolving from the experience of the skin, famously stating that the ego is fundamentally a body ego. From this, organ relations evolve, constellated through human familial relations producing irreducible objects in relation to one another (Klein 1952). In retheorising the concept of internal objects in the context of schizophrenia, Deleuze and Guattari (1977) argue the notion of a symbolic order created through familial relations is itself a form of social colonisation and that to produce new ways of becoming in the world requires flattening familial power structures into surfaces constituting a body without organs (BWO). Following the theories of Artaud, Deleuze and Guattari (1977) define the BWO as present and interactive, resituating and reterritorialising social hierarchies that broaden out our relations beyond the family, and beyond the human. In the context of art psychotherapy pedagogy, the art takes a particularly relevant role in deterritorialising ways of conceptualising human development. Genosko writes:

In an art psychotherapy pedagogical context of learning about research, the area of study intends to produce new insights. Artistic practices can be central to this process, functioning both as methodological tools and critical mediums for exploring the entanglements of human-nature-techne to generate ethical impact on the social. Therefore, this paper proposes that the use of arts at the intersections of known-unknown forms the basis of an iterative model for investigating complex, situated problems, for example, power differentials and social inclusion, enabling researchers to investigate the affective, relational, and material dimensions of the subject.

Research methodologies in arts and humanities have been affected by multiple waves of feminist thought, each providing important contributions for research pedagogies (Ropers-Huilman and Winters 2011: 672). The first wave focused on women’s suffrage and legal inequalities, producing a stronger social positionality, while the second wave addressed broader issues of sexuality, family and workplace rights (Tong 2014). The third wave emphasised diversity and intersectionality, acknowledging the differences among women’s experiences based on race, class, and sexual orientation (Gilligan 2015). Whilst identity politics is a central tenet of today’s feminist politic, a deep-rooted subversive and politically enfolded approach to challenging normative hegemonies has recently been well theorised. In terms of teaching practices, differing from the idea that the lecturer has a neutral positionality, Barad (2007: 383) refers to an enfolded approach as a co-constituted event rather than the lecturer taking a ‘view from nowhere’ (Latour 2007: 145).

Art psychotherapy is often aligned with health paradigms and professional accreditation for the student learning falls under the Health and Care Professions Council. However feminist ideologies, introduced through the arts, incur a tension with typical clinical methods. Unlike the dominant hegemonies in medicalised practices, arts-based methods offer a potent avenue to engage with the materialities and the embodied experiences of individuals (Leavy 2020: 21) that extend beyond sanitised, idealised universal archetypes of the pristine carer calmly offering a guiding light for the wounded to heal. Appliances, tools and affects are all embedded in procedures that still position women at the margins as objects done to within a category of passive otherness. The privileging of the laboratory environment as a neutral instrument rather than entangled co-creative event reduces bodies to objects done to.1

Conversely, posthuman feminism respects differences of situatedness in relation to the environment and the political, affective entanglements that produce markedly different versions of what it means to be a woman. Therefore, such an ecological framing argues for inclusion of actors that traditionally remain beyond the anthropocentric reach, essentially the agentive intra-activity of non-human entities (Barad 2007: 214). In Barad’s conceptualisation intra-active refers to the bi-directional relations between humans and their environment, an acknowledged affective quality that moves throughout the actions of an event altering the actor’s intended results.

Incorporating posthuman feminist methodologies into arts-based research requires recognising the material and affective dimensions of artistic practices. Art becomes a site of intra-action where human and non-human forces coalesce, facilitating the production of new situated knowledges (Haraway 1991).

The authors organised research workshops as part of the MA Art Psychotherapy Research Methodologies module. As part of this module, critical thinking is actively fostered within a posthuman framework, challenging students to reconsider conventional notions of human-centric research by engaging with the interconnectedness of human and non-human actors.

This pedagogical approach prioritises embodied, situated learning, encouraging students to critically engage with complex healthcare systems and their ethical, socio-political, and material dimensions.

Artistic practices are central to both the conceptual framework and practical application of posthuman feminist pedagogies. Below are examples of how arts psychotherapies practices are integrated into seminars, facilitating learning through situated, interactive workshops:

Ethological approaches to analysis emphasise the importance of intra-action, materiality and affect (Guattari 2005). In this context, the arts serve both as tools for analysis and as mediums for representation. The arts-based methodologies proposed here utilise a diffractive approach (Barad 2007) in which artistic practices such as sculpture, collage, performance and digital arts are employed to render visible the affective and material entanglements of healthcare systems.

Ethological approaches to analysis require productions of knowledge that oscillate between scales of intra-action, from the social to the micro. Where deductive research investigates known relations and their appearance in the specific and inductive research looks at the specific and their relations to the general, abductive research allows for the generation of new insights and hypotheses based on iterative process led research, whereby the scales of influence are navigated as a dialogical inclusive practice (Timmerman and Tavory 2012: 180). In arts-based research, where the focus is on emergent and often unpredictable phenomena, an abductive approach offers capacities for new relations to be developed and the inclusion of materiality that recognises more-than-human ontologies means that reconfiguring socio-political environments becomes an ethical inclusive approach.

If human interactive relations have generally been the focus of social sciences, psychology and health-based research, new materialism expands disciplinary parameters to research dynamic events. Therefore, classical models of thematisation can be adapted not only to be bi-directional (in terms of specific – general discourse) according to an abductive approach, but also to follow lines of affects, relations, and capacities, providing a framework for understanding how these phenomena intra-act and influence one another (Fox and Alldred 2015). The arts within this model of analysis provide the instruments through which events are reconstituted, remembered and enacted through material reconstructions, producing a rich assemblage of participant – researcher discourses emphasising the materiality of all entities and their capacity to influence one another (Coole and Frost 2010).

The following workshop example was inspired by trans philosopher, writer and curator, Paul Beatrice Preciado’s (2013) analysis of gender and material-discursive apparatus of technoscientific bodily production and biopolitics. In Testo Junkie, Preciado discusses developments in hormone synthesis since the 1950s in the pharmaceutical industry and the contraceptive pill as the first pharmacological molecule to be produced as a design object. In Preciado’s postqueer micropolitical analysis, the Panoptican Pill Box, creates a spatialisation of time producing what Foucault termed ‘anatomic-chronological scheme of action’ that combines architecture, design and body movement, transforming the user into an efficient (non-) reproducing machine.

A group installation-assemblage was created at the end of a series of workshops employing arts-based research methods to investigate the affects of design of everyday healthcare products (Figure 5). Assemblage was introduced to students both as arts form and methodological tool for a second-stage analysis of data attending to micro and macropolitical relations.

Cords and bindings, Sellotape, recycled junk materials, a found object (CPR manikin doll) and fabric bought cheap from Walthamstow fabric mile were installed in the theatre teaching space in response to a projected digital model mapping the results of analyses of human and nonhuman affects of everyday healthcare products. The macropolitical architectures of reproductive systems and their micropolitical affects were rendered visible in a matrilineal umbilical cord, a mother crowned guilty. Slumped figures were erased, subjected-to and not subject within the installation space and assemblage design. The body appeared dispossessed of its organs, the contents of the womb.

Deleuze and Guattari (1977) reject any form of triangulation in epistemic production as imposed by the regulatory schema of the Oedipal triangle. Rather the BWO is conceptualised as an antiproduction or an intervention which seeks to reject the Oedipal imposition of paternal authority in a vertical hierarchical language-based connective synthesis of world. Numen as divine truth is distributed where disjunctions are established independent of human-imaginary-symbolic devices of projection (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 13).

An arts-based approach to data analysis thus makes visible a new synthetic beyond the lines of a patriarchal logic to data analysis, disrupting normative representations of the healthcare picture and producing a more nuanced understanding of how micro and macropolitical relations contribute to global inequalities. Ultimately an ethological posthuman feminist arts-based approach to teaching research methodologies activates social justices through co-creating events producing ethical research.

The integration of posthuman feminist pedagogies into art psychotherapy training has profound implications for how future practitioners are educated. By reconceptualising pedagogy as an ecological encounter, educators move beyond traditional, human-centred approaches that focus solely on individual psychological change. Instead, this framework emphasizes the complex entanglements between humans, non-human entities, and technology (techne), fostering a more holistic understanding of subjectivity as fluid and interconnected. This shift challenges the compartmentalisation inherent in traditional university structures and encourages transdisciplinary learning, aligning with Deleuze and Guattari’s (1977) concept of the BWO as a dynamic, non-hierarchical plane of knowledge production.

Implementing arts-based practices and digital technology as critical tools within this pedagogical model allows students to engage actively with the material and affective dimensions of research. Workshops that utilize participatory artmaking and view data as material-semiotic inscriptions enable students to experience firsthand the relational processes that shape knowledge creation. This approach disrupts normative hegemonies in health data analysis by positioning students as co-producers of knowledge rather than passive recipients. It encourages them to consider data not just as abstract information but as dynamic artefacts emerging from the assemblage of humans, nature, and technology. Consequently, students develop critical thinking skills and a deeper awareness of socio-political and environmental contexts, preparing them to address systemic issues in healthcare. By fostering an ethics of encounter and emphasising the interconnectedness of all entities, this pedagogical shift equips future art psychotherapists to contribute meaningfully to social justice and navigate the complexities of a rapidly changing world.

This proposal of a posthuman, arts-based research pedagogy offers a transformative framework for art psychotherapy training, broadening the scope of research to include socio-political and ecological contexts. Through participatory arts workshops, embodied arts practices and digital arts, the proposed methodology allows for a deeper exploration of the material and affective entanglements of healthcare. By emphasising horizontal, non-hierarchical data relations, this approach encourages students to develop critical research skills that address both personal and systemic change. As such, this pedagogical model provides a vital foundation for art psychotherapy education to respond to the global socio-economic and environmental crises of contemporary society.