Creative approaches to qualitative researching

Description:

Course content overview

This intermediate level course offers a hands-on introduction to creative approaches to doing qualitative research. The various stages of research will be covered, from data collection and analysis through to writing with qualitative data. We begin by introducing what we mean by doing qualitative research creatively, before moving on to consider 'Facet methodology', an inventiveorientation to researching the multidimensionality of everyday lives, which puts the researcher’s creativity and imagination at the heart of methodological practice. The course also explores some of the key practical and ethical issues in using creative methods. Participants will be given a practical and hands-on introduction to a range of creative qualitative methods, including visual methods and ‘material methods’.  The course will also cover key principles in qualitative data analysis, and how these can be put into practice. Finally, we discuss practical and intellectual strategies for writing with qualitative data, and consider how it is possible to theorise, or write conceptually, with such data. The course includes several practical workshop exercises involving creating and analysing qualitative data, where participants will have the opportunity to work with their own data. It also incorporates a special Morgan Centre tenth anniversary event on Wednesday 6th July, at which members of the Morgan Centre will showcase their latest methodological innovations alongside a talk by a long standing friend of the Morgan Centre, Professor Les Back from Goldsmiths, University of London. This event will include a session at the end of the day exclusively for summer school participants.

This course will:

• Introduce students to creative methods both as an approach, and as a means of generating social science research data
• Introduce students to a range of creative methods
• Give students practical experience in the use of creative methods
• Introduce students to analytical strategies appropriate to creative methods
• Introduce students to strategies for writing with qualitative data

Course requirements

This is an intermediate course where participants will be expected to have a good understanding of the basic principles of qualitative methods and to have some experience of qualitative data collection and analysis. Ideally, participants would be in the position of having their own qualitative data to analyse. Participants will be invited to bring a small excerpt of their own qualitative data (eg text or pictures that can be brought in hard copy) for use in the participative workshop sections.

The number of places on this course is limited. Those applying to register on this course will be asked to submit a short statement outlining at what stage their research is and why they wish to attend this course.

Timetable:

Monday:

Session 1: 2.00pm - 5.00pm - Introductory Session: "Getting to know you".  Students talk about their own work and what they want to get out of the week.  Brian Heaphy, Helen Holmes, Sophie Woodward

Tuesday:

Session 2: 9.00am - 12.30pm - Introduction to Creative Methods.  Sue Heath and Jennifer Mason

Session 3: 1.30pm - 5.00pm - Introduction to Creative Methods.  Sue Heath and Jennifer Mason

Wednesday:

Session 4: 9.00am - 5.00pm - Morgan Centre 10th Anniversary Event: Creative methods case studies.  Morgan Centre staff

Session 5: 5.00pm - 6.00pm - Reflections on creative and 'live' methods.  Les Back (Goldsmiths)

Thursday:

Session 6: 9.00am - 12.30pm - Analysing Qualitative Data.  Workshop on data analysis produced through different creative methods.  Helen Holmes and Sophie Woodward

Session 7: 1.30pm - 5.00pm - Analysing Qualitative Data.  Workshop on data analysis produced through different creative methods.  Helen Holmes and Sophie Woodward

Friday:

Session 8: 9.00am - 12.30pm - Writing with Qualitative data.  Brian Heaphy

Course tutors:

Brian Heaphy: Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Morgan Centre. Research interests in the implications of social change for living with HIV; same sex intimacies; 'given' and chosen' families; ageing sexualities; friendships and other critical associations; theorising personal life; the links between sexualities and class; marriage and formalised partnerships, and qualitative research methods.

Sue Heath: Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Morgan Centre. Research interests in processes of household formation, including young adults' domestic and housing transitions, and shared living arrangements across the lifecourse; housing pathways; intergenerational transfers; research ethics; innovative creative methods, including current work on observational sketching as a research tool.

Helen Holmes: Hallsworth Fellow in the Sustainable Consumption Institute and member of the Morgan Centre. Research interests in material culture; theories of practice; temporality; everyday consumption; waste and disposal; contemporary practices of thrift; ethnographic methods; innovative qualitative methods.

Jennifer Mason: Professor of Sociology and co-founder of the Morgan Centre. Research interests in ‘relatedness’, affinities, and connectedness in everyday personal lives; kinship and other forms of relationship and association; connections between human and non-human worlds, including ‘living the weather’); methodology and epistemology; qualitative, creative and mixed method approaches that live up to the richness and vitality of real life experience.

Sophie Woodward: Lecturer in Sociology and member of the Morgan Centre. Research interests in material culture and materials; feminism and feminist theory; clothing and fashion; consumption; the everyday and the ordinary; innovative qualitative methods, including ethnography and ‘material methods’.

Cost:

Students £600 | University of Manchester Staff £600 | Other attendees £900

Website and registration:

http://www.methods.manchester.ac.uk/events/summer-school-2016/

Region:

North West

Keywords:

Qualitative Data Handling and Data Analysis

Related publications and presentations:

Qualitative Data Handling and Data Analysis

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