Doing it Ourselves: Crafting a Mad Zine Methodology

This article describes the approach we developed in our research project about radical mental health zines, or mad zines. Rather than importing a set of accepted methods from elsewhere, we drew on insights from the emerging fields of Zine Studies and Mad Studies and crafted our own DIY approach. As we wanted to develop a methodology that was congruent with the politics, cultures, and ethics of both the zine community and mad movements, we attempted to cultivate what we refer to as a Madzine sensibility. We detail that here, alongside the ideas that informed it. We describe how we used this approach to develop the specific methods we used in our research. We are not claiming to have fully resolved any of the ethical-political challenges involved in researching zines in general, or Madzines in particular. Rather, we share here our process, in the hope that it will be useful to the growing number of scholars who are researching zines and/or using zines in their research.