This area offers a collection of spaces to explore a range of methods. When we as a team began to think about the larger DLR, we became wary of how diversity and inclusion are often simply used as decoration and to tick boxes. We believe, however, that issues of inclusion and diversity need to be part of the foundations of any research project and academic practice, otherwise scholarship becomes by design exclusionary. The wealth of insights from feminist, anti-racist, queer, disability, and Indigenous studies highlight the centrality of methods and methodology for building inclusivity and justice in our work as scholars. Indeed, we recognised that many of the methods that students and scholars take for granted today have been largely shaped by practitioners working from or with marginalised communities.
This area thus offers introductions to a range of methods and methodologies that tend to the genealogies of thought and practice that have made them popular and powerful toolboxes for music scholars today. They do not provide exhaustive accounts of these methods and methodologies, but offer a starting point for further exploration. We hope they inspire deeper appreciation of the importance of placing diversity and inclusion at the heart of our praxis as scholars, in our research, pedagogy, and community engagement.