Building a career as a creative methods trainer

Independent researcher Dr Helen Kara has built a career as a trainer and international expert in creative methods and research ethics.

NCRM supported Dr Kara’s professional development in various ways, in particular through employment as a trainer on numerous courses.

Impact achieved

Over a 10-year period, Dr Kara developed her skills as a trainer in creative methods and research ethics, enabling her to pass on her knowledge to hundreds of researchers.

She has written numerous books and other publications on these topics, participated in major international projects and launched various initiatives, including a journal, UK ethics committee and conference.

Her contributions have equipped researchers around the world with new skills, advanced creative research practices and helped to raise standards in research ethics.

"NCRM has had an enormous and overwhelmingly positive impact on my career over the last 10 years," Dr Kara wrote in her winning application for the NCRM 20th Anniversary Impact Prize. "This in turn has led to wide-ranging positive impacts on others."

How involvement with NCRM made a difference

In January 2014, Dr Helen Kara was planning to write a book on creative research methods. As part of her background work for the text, she decided to attend an NCRM course, Working with Paradata, Marginalia and Fieldnotes, a move which began a long-term association with the centre.

Dr Kara was interested in attending NCRM's 2014 Research Methods Festival at the University of Oxford but, at the time, could not afford the registration fee. However, NCRM’s Professor Rosalind Edwards arranged for Dr Kara to take part as one of the team of helpers running the event.

This proved to be an important experience in her career, with several sessions providing valuable insights that informed her book. As she describes in her application for the NCRM 20th Anniversary Impact Prize, two sessions had a "considerable impact" on her thinking about mixed methods, while others offered inspiration for her work on ethics and creative practices.

Delivering training for NCRM and producing learning materials

In 2015, Dr Kara published her book, Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide. The following year, she became a Visiting Fellow at NCRM, with Professor Edwards as her mentor. She also delivered a paid presentation for the centre, discussing creative methods at a seminar for Qualitative Expertise at Southampton.

Dr Kara attended a session at the 2016 Research Methods Festival that informed work on a new book she was writing, this time on ethics. Other events that year, on pedagogy and Indigenous research methods, had a "profound" impact on other parts of her work.

NCRM then commissioned Dr Kara to present two video tutorials, on creative methods and research ethics, which remain among the most popular resources on the centre’s website with a total of more than 150,000 views. This experience gave Dr Kara the skills and experience to start her own YouTube channel, which now has more than 2,000 subscribers.

Next, NCRM booked Dr Kara to run in-person short courses on creative methods in 2017 and 2018. She continued to attend and present at various NCRM events, which helped to develop her skills as a trainer and inform her book Research Ethics in the Real World, as well as the second edition of her book on creative methods.

Becoming established as an expert trainer

Between 2020 and 2025, Dr Kara delivered 18 NCRM short courses, with the majority on creative methods and research ethics. This work provided a direct benefit to her career, as well as new opportunities to work with other organisations, including not-for-profit and charity clients.

"The courses NCRM asked me to design have been requested by doctoral training partnerships and individual universities in the UK and overseas," she said. "I have taught these topics in Australia, Canada, Ireland and Norway in person, and for Australia, Singapore and Switzerland online."

Dr Kara published the second edition of her book on creative methods in 2020. She also published the book Qualitative Research for Quantitative Researchers in 2022, drawing on learning from NCRM’s Research Methods Festivals, as well as journal articles.

Her work on creative methods has expanded into edited collections – the Bloomsbury Handbook of Creative Research Methods and the Handbook of Creative Data Analysis – and a book series, Creative Research Methods in Practice. Together, these works continue to educate learners and advance the field.

"Overall, this [impact prize application] shows that my work has advanced understanding and applications of [creative research methods] and [radical research ethics] for students, teachers, practitioners and communities worldwide," said Dr Kara. "My work would have had much less impact without NCRM’s ongoing support and encouragement for my own career and development."

Sharing knowledge globally

Dr Kara’s experiences at three NCRM Research Methods Festivals inspired her to create the annual International Creative Research Methods Conference, which she first ran in 2023. The event attracted researchers from across the world, providing an opportunity for people to learn new skills, share knowledge and advance creative research methodology. NCRM provided bursaries for researchers to attend the 2023 and 2024 events.

NCRM’s support and encouragement for Dr Kara’s work inspired her to found the International Creative Research Methods Journal and the UK’s Independent Research Ethics Committee.

As a result of Dr Kara’s book on ethics, she was invited to join the lead team of PRO-RES, a project funded by the European Union to promote ethical evidence to policymakers and others in Europe. She has worked with the European Commission (EC) in several capacities, assessing the ethical dimensions of multi-million Euro research proposals, advising on EC-funded projects and training as an ethics expert.

In addition to the work outlined above, Dr Kara has worked with NCRM and various other organisations on a vast variety of projects over the past decade, particularly in the fields of creative methods and research ethics. She explained that her accomplishments illustrate how support for independent researchers can have a huge impact.

"Overall, the impact of NCRM on my independent research and scholarship has been profound, wide-ranging, and will continue for years to come," she said. "Very few UK institutions are willing to support independent researchers, yet NCRM’s ongoing relationship with me and other indies shows how incredibly impactful such support can be."

Read more about Dr Kara's ethics work in her NCRM case study

Access NCRM online resources by Dr Helen Kara on our creative methods learning pathway