Walking as Knowing: Plurilingualism and Intercultural Research Through Embodied, Relational, and Aesthetic Inquiry
This month鈥檚 Education Research Matters features the work of Dr. Dani猫le Moore, whose research bridges plurilingualism, language education, arts-based inquiry, and intercultural ethics. Across her work, Dr. Moore invites us to rethink what counts as knowledge and how we come to know, relate to, and learn with others. Her recent book chapter, 鈥溾 is an autobiographical exploration of walking and mapping as relational and aesthetic ways of knowing. Interweaving analysis with images and poetic reflections, Dr. Moore illuminates an evolving approach to inquiry as a relational, sensory, and ethical practice.
For Dr. Moore, plurilingualism and interculturalities are not topics to be analyzed from a distance but as ways of being in the world. She resists the notion of culture as fixed or bounded, seeing it instead as an unfolding origami of encounter and transformation, emerging through relationships among people, languages, (hi)stories, and the lands. Walking our landscape, she contends, is both literal and metaphorical: an act of movement through place and meaning, of listening and of noticing the stories embedded in spaces often overlooked or silenced.
Language moves at the centre of Dr. Moore鈥檚 work. Having lived across linguistic and cultural thresholds鈥攆rom the French Alps to the unceded Coast Salish territories鈥攕he writes of language(s) as both inheritance and loss. For her, language is not something to be held or owned, but something that exists as a resonance, a vibration between speakers and worlds. In her plurilingual poetical writing, French, Arpitan (the language of her mother), Italian (the language of her father), Japanese, Chinese, English and Indigenous languages meet, dance and mingle, weaving and shaping one another鈥檚 rhythms and silences. This relational understanding reframes plurilingualism as a practice of care and listening rather than a skill to be acquired.
Dr. Moore鈥檚 research practice is grounded in relational accountability. Drawing from Indigenous scholar Shawn Wilson鈥檚 insight that 鈥渞esearch is ceremony,鈥 she sees inquiry as a practice of care鈥攖oward participants, communities, and the lands that sustain research. Her collaborative projects in Canada, Europe, Japan, and Latin America begin with the question鈥攚hose stories are heard and whose remain unspoken? She designs research as a shared process of sense-making, where authorship, translation, and interpretation are continuously negotiated. This ethic of relation also shapes her writing, which intertwines theoretical reflection with poetry, imagery, and autobiographical fragments.
Dr. Moore鈥檚 methodological orientation emerges from arts-based research traditions, particularly Ca/r/tography, blending the roles of artist, researcher, and teacher and in which walking and mapping become modes of aesthetic inquiry, creative practice, and teaching. In collaboration with students and community partners, she explores how sensory experience, artmaking, and dialogue can reimagine identity, language, and belonging. Participants use apps and online platforms, such as Whose Land, 脥尘别蝉丑, and Padlets, to document murals, Indigenous place names, and sounds from their local environments. These collections of photographs, reflections, and maps become pathways for shared learning鈥攅volving records of collaboration that link personal experience with the cultural and historical dimensions of place.
Drawing guidance from Indigenous knowledge principles such as 脥尘别蝉丑 (鈥渢o walk鈥 in S岣祑x瘫w煤7mesh snichim) and Etuaptmumk (鈥淭wo-Eyed Seeing,鈥 Mi鈥檏maw), which emphasize learning together across knowledge systems, Dr. Moore explores walking as a way of learning with others鈥攈uman and more-than-human鈥攖hrough shared presence and mutual responsibility. Intercultural understanding becomes a living practice of attunement, relation, and shared responsibility.
Dr. Moore also introduces the idea of suspension, inspired by the Chinese term xuanfu鈥斺渉anging and floating.鈥 Inspired by sociologist Biao Xiang, the concept captures the delicate pause between knowing and not knowing. That is, suspension is a research disposition: a readiness to linger in uncertainty, to resist premature closure, and to let questions breathe. In a scholarly climate that often rewards speed and certainty, this orientation becomes an act of methodological patience鈥攁 reminder that reflection, doubt, and humble hesitation are integral to ethical inquiry.
Dr. Moore鈥檚 work offers us a compelling re-examination of what inquiry can be. Her integration of sensory mapping, digital storytelling, and plurilingual expression expands the boundaries of qualitative research. She suggests that data can take the form of sound, movement, and resonance鈥攖hat evidence can emerge through walking, weaving, and witnessing. Her approach carries significant implications for teacher education and community-based research, where curiosity, empathy, and reciprocity are as important as analysis or measurement.
Research, Dr. Moore asserts, should be collaborative and multimodal. Knowledge does not reside solely in text or transcript but also in movement, sound, and image. Through walking and mapping, participants engage with the world as both researchers and co-authors of meaning. Inquiry becomes an unfolding conversation that privileges reciprocity and imagination over extraction or representation. As Dr. Moore reminds us, research is not only about finding answers but about cultivating awareness of the landscapes we inhabit, the histories we inherit, and the responsibilities we carry. To 鈥渨alk our landscape as interculturality鈥 is, in her view, to recognize that knowing is never solitary. It is a practice of learning to move in relation with others, to listen for resonance, and to be transformed in the process.
References
Moore, D. (2024). Walking our landscape as interculturality: A visual essay in resonances. In F. Dervin (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Critical Interculturality in Communication and Education (pp. 308鈥328). Routledge.
Other recent works include:
Ara煤jo e Sa, H.; Dantas, L., Moore, D., & Carinhas, R. (In press). C.art.ography, freedom and democratic citizenship. In P. Kalaja, S. Mel贸-Pfeifer, & V. Tavares (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Arts-Based Approaches in Applied Language Studies. Routledge.
Moore, D.; Arias, S. & Beddouche, L. (In press, Nov. 2025). Paysages linguistiques, cartographisations et transformations en 茅ducation plurilingue. Revue Multimodalit茅s, 22.