Thinking with Drawing

Drawing has long had a place in social research, expanded recently in arts-based research and visual studies. Social research with drawings, however, where both the artifact and the practice of drawing are constitutive parts of the production of knowledge, often in collaboration with research participants, is still a rare and niche practice. In this article I reflect on the less covered aspects of the use of narrative drawing, as an integral part of research, rather than as an element to be integrated ex post. A theoretical discussion is accompanied by examples of recent experimentations, which have seen the field of comic-based research (CBR) emerge. I argue for the mainstreaming of drawing as a complementary tool in the various stages of research, from note-taking to interactive methods with participants, with the potential to expand our ways of seeing and thinking.