Artefact

Objects made or used by humans that provide information about history or culture.

Physical or symbolic objects that carry layered histories. In this framework, artefacts are not fixed records of the past but viewed as living nodes engaged in iterative storytelling, capable of embodying contested memories, hybrid identities, and affective, poetic meaning.

Scholar Klaus Krippendorff writes on the idea of giving things meaning in his article "On the Essential Contexts of Artefacts or on the Proposition That Design Is Making Sense (Of Things)".1 With his writing, he shows us how to be cautious about the idea that "things" exist objectively, as if they are entirely separate from how we understand them, stating: "The phrase of things is in parentheses to cast doubt on a third interpretation that 'design is concerned with the subjective meanings of objectively existing objects.' The parentheses suggest that we cannot talk about things that make no sense at all, that the recognition of something as a thing is already a sense-derived distinction, and that the division of the world into a subjective and an objective realm is therefore quite untenable."2

Autopoietic

A system that can create, generate and maintain itself independently.

In this framework, it refers to the self-generative, living character of historical narratives and artefacts. Here, history is not static; meanings and stories about the past are constantly re-authored in response to new contexts, voices, and relational engagements.

The term "autopoietic" (from autopoiesis) was coined by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, two Chilean biologists, in the early 1970s. In their work Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realisation of the Living,3 Maturana and Varela's original definition is: "An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components which: (i) through their inter-actions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network."4

Cybernetics

The study of communication, thinking, control systems, and feedback loops in systems examines dynamic relationships.

Cybernetics, within this framework, involves feedback mechanisms driven by transparency and radical honesty in prompt questions across layers, enabling continuous negotiation and reconstruction of archival meaning.

Norbert Wiener coined the term cybernetics to describe systems of control and communication in animals, machines, and organisations. His foundational book, Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine,5 laid the groundwork for the field. Editor Sanjoy K. Mitter explains: "Cybernetics is concerned with the role that the concept of information plays in the sciences of communication, control, and statistical mechanics. It is at once philosophical and technical, the contrasting points of view interspersed throughout the book."6

Epistemic

From 'Epistemology'. Related to knowledge or the process of knowing.

In this framework, it refers to modes of understanding that emerge from the interplay between artefacts, memory, silenced narratives, and the disruption of linear archival order as well as other sources and perspectives from different archival institutions.

In a Methodology workshop and presentation at the University of Brighton, hosted by Dr Sally Sutherland, the way to understand the term 'Epistemology' was presented as: "Epistemology — How do we know what we know? How do you believe knowledge is formed? (e.g. Through experience? Data? Dialogue? Making?)"7 These questions guide us to understand the term on a level that is not merely definitional but profoundly reflective. They open a space for epistemological reflexivity, where the researcher must ask not only what they claim to know, but also how, why, and for whom such knowledge matters. In this light, epistemology becomes an ethical and philosophical anchor, one that demands coherence between what we study and how we choose to study it.

Historiography

The study of how history is researched and written.

The practice and philosophy of writing history. The framework re-envisions historiography as non-linear, poetic, and autopoietic, shifting away from fixed truths toward a dynamic remixing and retelling of past events through honesty and transparency.

Hybrid Identities

Identities formed by blending elements from different cultures or backgrounds.

Liable to change and form in 'third space' positions, hybrid identities are those shaped at the intersection of different cultures, perspectives, or histories, often resisting imposed binary categories and instead engaging in ongoing negotiation and transformation.

Homi K. Bhabha popularised the concept in his writing on colonialism, race, identity and difference in cultural politics in The Location of Culture.8 He describes hybrid identities as those that emerge in the "third space", a liminal, in-between space where new cultural meanings and identities are negotiated beyond fixed binaries. When asked "Would you call this 'third space' an identity as such?" Bhabha explains: "Not so much identity as identification (in the psychoanalytic sense). I try to talk about hybridity through a psychoanalytic analogy, so that identification is a process of identifying with, and through another object, an object of otherness, at which point the agency of identification — the subject — is itself always ambivalent, because of the intervention of that otherness."9

Hybrid Voice

A way of expressing ideas that combines diverse cultural or personal influences.

In this framework, a hybrid voice refers to a narrative voice or perspective that emerges from multiple, intersecting identities, cultural heritages, or positionalities, refusing singular or overly simplistic expression and embracing multiplicity.

Mikhail Bakhtin's seminal 1941 critical essay "Discourse in the Novel"10 proposes that novels permit different types of linguistic style and meaning. The novelist can remain and write while existing in a state of hybridity. Bakhtin explains: "Hybrid is not only double-voiced and double-accented (as in rhetoric) but is also double-languaged; for in it there are not only two individual consciousnesses, two voices, two accents, as there are two socio-linguistic consciousnesses, two epochs, that come together and consciously fight it out on the territory of utterance."11 He further explains that "Such unconscious hybrids have been at the same time profoundly productive historically: they are pregnant with potential for new world views, with new 'internal forms' for perceiving the world in words".12

Meaning-Making

The process of interpreting and understanding information or experiences.

The relational and iterative process by which individuals and communities produce significance out of historical material. In this approach, meaning is negotiated rather than given, influenced by honesty, transparency, and a hybrid positionality.

Mythopoesis

The act of creating myths or symbolic stories. The act of creating new myths.

In this framework, it refers to poetic practices that re-envision artefacts and histories as mythic or symbolic, allowing for the transformation of past trauma, erasure, or displacement into empowering narratives.

Mythopoetic

The creation or use of myths in storytelling or art.

In this framework, it refers to the poetic and symbolic remaking of history, artefacts, and identities, infusing them with new or alternative meaning beyond mere facts, leaning into imagination and myth-making as tools of reclamation and transformation.

Ontological

The nature of being or existence.

Concerned with being and existence. The framework uses the term ontological as a way of reclaiming and reanimating the being and memory embodied in artefacts, challenging the imposition of singular "truths" and recognising multiplicity.

Poetic Transparency

Expressing ideas openly with a focus on emotional or artistic clarity.

The framework uses poetic transparency as a methodology where revealing and sharing are not limited to factual disclosure but are done in a way that honours the emotive, aesthetic, and interpretive layers of history, allowing for complexity and ambiguity rather than clarity alone.

Radical Honesty

Being completely truthful.

In this framework, it refers to the intentional, often vulnerable and uncomfortable, practice of confronting and expressing truths that challenge established narratives, especially those shaped by colonial or institutional power. It enacts a reclamation of voice and memory, surfacing suppressed or erased stories in relational and epistemic contexts.

Relational

Relationships or connections between people or ideas.

In this framework, it refers to the ways in which meaning and narrative are co-created in interaction, emphasising the network of relationships among artefacts, tellers, and audiences, rather than isolated or objective historical truths.

Tales

Stories, often passed down orally, that convey experiences or lessons.

Stories or narrative fragments. Within the framework, tales weave together artefacts, memories, and voices, resisting fixed or linear historical accounts in favour of layered, mythic retelling.

Third Space Positionality

A perspective that combines different cultural or social identities in a flexible, in-between space.

A conceptual stance that emerges in the "in-between" (third space) of identity, culture, and power. It challenges binaries, embraces hybridity, and enables new forms of knowing and being, fostering critique and transformation of dominant historical narratives.

Homi K. Bhabha explains: "with the notion of cultural difference, I try to place myself in that position of liminality, in that productive space of the construction of culture as difference, in the spirit of alterity or otherness."13 He continues: "this third space displaces the histories that constitute it, and sets up new structures of authority, new political initiatives, which are inadequately understood through received wisdom."14

Transparency

Openness and clarity in communication or presentation.

Beyond factual openness, transparency in this framework is framed as aesthetic integrity — a mode of engaging with artefacts and histories that invites critical reflection, uncovers fractures between past and present, and supports feedback, dialogue, and reinterpretation.