In Professional Practice research, we’ve long celebrated the idea that some of the most valuable learning comes from within our own messy, lived experiences. But what happens when that messiness isn’t just inconvenient, but ethically fraught, emotionally overwhelming, or simply too complex for conventional research approaches?
That was the starting point for our work on Necessarily Insider Research—presented alongside Ruth Myers, Rob Nelson, Lucky Hawkins, and Dave Guruge. At the heart of our project is a deceptively simple idea: that some research can only be done from the inside. But once we accept that premise, we also need new ways to ask, reflect, and evaluate what we’re doing.
Why “Necessarily Insider”?
Too often, ethical frameworks for insider research assume we can separate “research” from “practice”—that a project can be neatly bounded, its participants identified in advance, and all risks assessed before the first word is written.
But professional practice doesn’t work like that. The real issues often emerge unexpectedly: addiction, racism, gendered power dynamics, institutional silencing. The professional doesn’t start out researching these things—they live them. And the conventional research playbook doesn’t always help when your “participants” are colleagues, your “data” includes emotional labour, and your questions evolve with the work itself.
Introducing the Necessarily-Insider Research Framework (NIRF)
So we built a new framework. The Necessarily-Insider Research Framework (NIRF) offers a flexible structure for evaluating emergent, messy, and often ethically complex professional practice research. Rather than prescribing a rigid method, we offer evaluative questions that guide the researcher at key stages:
- Framing the challenge
- Generating potential methodologies
- Selecting and justifying an approach
- Navigating application in practice
- Articulating contributions—ethical, practical, and scholarly
This approach draws on Costley’s epistemology of practice, Tracy’s Big Tent criteria for qualitative quality, and Patton’s developmental evaluation. Together, these perspectives help us embrace the inherent complexity of real-world research without abandoning rigour, responsibility, or reflection.
What It Looks Like in Practice
We tested NIRF with three doctoral projects:
- Lucky Hawkins reframed organisational dynamics through a “shoal versus school” lens, adapting his research after a major disruption and using NIRF to validate the evolution of method.
- Rob Nelson used dialogic storytelling—interviewing fictionalised versions of himself and others—to critically reflect on collaborative, project-based learning.
- Dave Guruge developed an emancipatory leadership model grounded in storytelling, applying NIRF to shape and articulate a new research method around cultural transformation.
In each case, NIRF didn’t dictate the research—it offered structure, prompts, and ethical grounding for inquiry in flux.
Why This Matters
The real world doesn’t wait for ethics approval forms. For those of us doing Work-Integrated Learning Research (WILR) or Professional Practice doctorates, we need tools that match our reality. That means frameworks that:
- Support emergence, not just plans
- Prioritise responsiveness over rigid protocols
- Recognise the researcher as both actor and observer
- Hold space for discomfort, disruption, and depth
NIRF does just that.
What’s Next?
We see this as just the beginning. The evaluative question approach can be applied across sectors and disciplines—anywhere practitioners are trying to learn from difficult, evolving, and sometimes ethically complex situations. And we’re keen to develop this further with others walking similar paths.
Because if we’re serious about research that makes a difference, we can’t keep avoiding the hard places. Sometimes, learning really does happen where angels fear to tread.
Computing for Sustainability 
June 30th, 2025 → 2:41 pm
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