ABSTRACT
One way of supporting such enquiries is to bring PR and emerging more-thanhuman approaches into direct conversation. As noted in the introduction to this collection, both Henry Buller (2015), and Timothy Hodgetts and Jamie Lorimer (2015) argue that more-than-human geographies should seek methods that enable researchers to ask ‘what matters’ to nonhumans (e.g. Buller 2015, p. 7). For PR, this kind of question has been continually at its core, as participatory researchers seek ways of working with specific human communities to identify and respond to issues that matter to them. They do this by breaking down the boundaries between researcher and researched, ideally working in partnership to set research questions, determine which methods to use, analyse data, co-create outputs and develop dissemination strategies. In the process, broader questions of ethics, voice, knowledge and power are explored both practically and theoretically. Related questions also reside at the heart of more-than-human approaches,
with issues of ethical relationality, the problem of representation, of exchange across different perceptual worlds and anthropocentrism constituting some of the area’s most pressing issues.
