Empathy and dialogue: Embracing the art of creative review

Imagine the moment you first encounter a piece of creative ethnography—a poem, a performance, an image—that speaks to the heart of human experience in ways that traditional academic texts rarely do. It moves you, challenges you, perhaps unsettles you. But what happens next? Do you simply appreciate the work and walk away, or is there something deeper at stake in this encounter? What if, instead, we view this moment as an invitation—a call to engage in the same kind of rigorous dialogue that shapes the world of scholarly research, but with a spirit of openness and collaboration?

Creative work, like traditional scholarship, thrives on exchange, and peer review is not just a procedural task. It is an act of co-creation, a chance to enter into conversation with the work and its creator, to shape and be shaped by the process. What if we could reimagine peer review not as a box-ticking exercise, but as a space for creative and intellectual growth—for both the reviewer and the reviewed?