Developing educational research through a Penal-Lectical assemblage

Purpose This paper explores the methodological dimensions of a prisoner–university academic co-author partnership, advancing co-production as a critical mode of knowledge generation within, against and beyond the carceral environment. Situating the collaboration within post-structural and posthuman scholarship, the paper challenges humanist assumptions about agency, authorship and expertise, instead emphasising relationality, affect and entanglement in the co-production of academic knowledge (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987; Braidotti, 2013) within the context of educational research. Drawing on post-structural and posthuman theory, we introduce the Penal-Lectical Assemblage to represent our interaction with human and non-human entities in the co-production of educational research. In addition, we introduce a methodological framework that could be adopted by academics who are interested in researching and co-authoring with prisoners. The paper outlines the challenges that we encountered, and the tools within the assemblage that we interacted with, to co-produce educational research. Design/methodology/approach The paper applies posthuman theory to co-production between an academic and a prisoner. Findings We analyse the methodological process that we adopted and develop the concept of the Penal-Lectical Assemblage. Research limitations/implications We propose a framework which is designed to support researchers who wish to undertake co-production with prisoners. Practical implications The framework that we propose will support researchers to work in a relational way when undertaking co-production work. Social implications The proposed methodology addresses the concept of epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007) by proposing a methodology which is underpinned by relationality and the democratic principles of academic co-production. Originality/value To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to apply poststructuralist and posthuman concepts to the field of co-production between academics and prisoners. Second, the application of these concepts to co-produced educational research is vastly under-developed. Third, the paper introduces the Penal-Lectical Assemblage, an original methodological framework which represents our approach to the co-production of educational research. Finally, the paper presents a novel framework for co-production which researchers could utilise in other fields.