The idea of research having an epistemological basis clearly implies that epistemology is to be foundational, in a sense that many philosophers now identify as a decisive wrong turn in the history of philosophical thought. The phrase 'Research findings' carries a strong implication of empiricism, as if research essentially discovers facts and correlations. The assumptions that the world is to be scientifically known by agents separate and distinct from it, that epistemology will supply the basis for sound knowledge, and of empiricism are essentially modernist.This modernist framework needs to be challenged. A first move can be made by emphasising confidence in research rather than 'soundness' or 'good quality'. We can have confidence in ways of thinking, interpreting and researching that are quite different from the (supposedly) scientific. This then enables us to explore what we here call Romantic thinking and research, which enables us to explore three possibilities: of doing justice to the unstable or protean; of grasping that our research may create reality as much as report or represent it; and of moving away from thinking of our relationship to these realities only in terms of 'knowing' them.