24 september 2025
Amateur Craft as Method-in-the-Making:
This research output documents a pandemic-era experiment in which academic researchers used knitting to record and reflect on their digital screen time, exploring craft as a critical research method and a tool for data sensitisation, feminist activism, and embodied knowledge making. Project Overview: A group of academics and amateur knitters from Maastricht University and partner institutions met online during 2020–2021, using knitting to document their own screen time over a week of lockdown. Their creative outputs—a collection of individually knitted rectangles—were later assembled as a tactile "knitted book" to display in arts and crafts contexts, as well as academic contexts. The project linked technofeminist thinking, craftivism, and artistic research practices, aiming to make visible both quantitative and qualitative aspects of technology use during social isolation. Main Topics and Learning Objectives: • Explore how amateur craftwork (knitting) can act as a research method to sensitise and interpret personal data. • Engage with concepts from technofeminism and critical craft studies to understand the role of tactile, embodied methodologies. • Foster social connection, experimentation, and reflection on digital dependency during the COVID-19 lockdown. • Develop awareness of how materials, technique, and individual interpretation shape both method and outcome in collaborative research. Audience: This work suits students, educators, and researchers interested in qualitative and artistic research methods, feminist theory, science and technology studies (STS), and creative digital-literacy pedagogies. It models interdisciplinary practice and encourages engagement with data, methodology, and making as interconnected experiential processes. Authors and Licensing: Authors: Denise Petzold (first and corresponding author), Laura Barendregt, Ruth Benschop, Anna Harris, Laudy van den Heuvel, Bernike Pasveer, Veerle Spronck, Sally Wyatt, affiliated with Maastricht University, TU Delft, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, and HKU University of Arts Utrecht. The text is suitable for publication in open educational repositories and supports open, collaborative engagement with academic craftwork. The pictures of the digitised version of the book were taken by Eric Bleize. Suggested Citation: “Amateur Craft as Method-in-the-Making: Experiments in Knitting Screen Time during a Pandemic” by Denise Petzold, Laura Barendregt, Ruth Benschop, Anna Harris, Laudy van den Heuvel, Bernike Pasveer, Veerle Spronck and Sally Wyatt (2025), Maastricht University, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). This license permits reuse, distribution, and adaptation, provided appropriate credit is given.
Denise Petzold, Laura Barendregt, Ruth Benschop, Anna Harris, Laudy van den Heuvel, Bernike Pasveer, Veerle Spronck, Sally Wyatt