More-than-human research: Being with as onto-epistemological method

The increasing recognition of human entanglement with nonhuman agents, including animals, plants, natural entities, artefacts, and digital technologies, calls for new methodological approaches in qualitative research. This research note introduces being with as a research method. Inspired by Indigenous epistemologies and multispecies ethnography, being with entails a meditative state that opens up spaces for the perception of nonhuman presence. Instead of rationalizing, categorizing, and classifying nonhuman behaviour, being with redirects attention to the more-than-human transformations of human researchers. Bringing together a wide range of existing more-than-human research practices, this text illustrates the many forms being with a variety of nonhuman agents can take. It then examines the question of what being with means for data analysis and the writing process, which are taking place in the research assemblage involving the participation of data, technologies, and text.