Diverse human hands holding speech bubblesThe second session, run as part of the NCRM Collaborative & Participatory Methodological Special Interest Group (CP MSIG)’s 2026 Critical Conversations webinar series, asked a question that many of us grapple with throughout our careers: how do we make the case for qualitative research in professional, policy and academic contexts where its value is not always recognised or well understood?
As in our previous Critical Conversations, three speakers shared short lightning talks before we split into breakout rooms for more in-depth discussion. What followed was an energising, frank, and at times very honest exchange — one that touched on everything from the architectures of participation to egg donation. Here are some of the key themes and talking points from the event.
The Lightning Talks
Dr Liam Berriman — Bringing Children's and Families' Voices into Research on Public Services
Liam Berriman, Director of the Centre for Innovation and Research in Childhood and Youth (CIRCY) and Associate Professor at the University of Sussex, opened the session by exploring what it means to bring children's and families' voices meaningfully into research on public services.
A recurring concern in Liam's talk was the risk of essentialising the categories we work with. Before we can involve children, young people and families in research, he argued, we need to think carefully about how those categories are defined and by whom — and what assumptions about family roles and relationships we carry, often unexamined, into our designs.
Liam also drew attention to what he called the architectures of participation: the conditions and structures that need to be in place before people can feel genuinely able to take part. Participation is not simply a matter of invitation; it requires deliberate design.
His talk then turned to a challenge of how qualitative researchers working with policy makers can ensure they are having the right conversations with children and families. This includes asking whether the research studies aims, framing and language are meeting them where they are, and scaffolding conversations through relevant points of reference. Drawing on his recent research, he gave the examples of talking about the sometimes abstract concept of ‘administrative data’ and the challenge of how consultations about public sector data can be grounded in the lived experiences and concerns of families.
In the breakout discussion that followed, participants extended these themes into questions of how public institutions actually understand and use participatory data in practice. There was a real appetite for practical strategies: how do you find the right moment to introduce richer, qualitative evidence into a process designed around spreadsheets and targets? The conversation returned repeatedly to the importance of relationships — of building trust with children and families over time, and of speaking their language without abandoning the complexity of what participatory methods can reveal.
Dr Kayleigh Charlton — The Possibilities and Practicalities of Zines as a Form of Data Generation
Kayleigh Charlton, Research Associate at the Children and Young People's Centre for Justice at the University of Strathclyde, invited participants to rethink what counts as data — and what gets counted.
Zines, as Kayleigh described them, are self-made mini-magazines: compact, visual, and highly flexible. Participants might fill them with images cut from newspapers or magazines, with drawings, with fragments of text — whatever best captures their story. Crucially, there is no skill or criteria required. The form is open and accessible in a way that text-heavy methods are not, making them particularly well suited to work with children and young people, and with people who may find writing a barrier to participation.
In Kayleigh's research, zines have been used in several ways: to collect young people's chronological experiences, to structure workshops, and as prompts in police interviews — helping to open up reflection on how policing relates to young people's lives. Sessions were audio-recorded, allowing Kayleigh to capture not just the content of the zines but participants' own interpretations of what they had created. Content and thematic analysis emerged as the most appropriate frameworks for making sense of the material.
What came through clearly in Kayleigh's talk was the generative potential of this method — the way it creates conditions for expression and reflection that more conventional approaches can close down. The breakout discussion that followed ran out of time, which felt entirely fitting: the conversation had clearly taken off. Participants were struck by how much leverage zines offer as a method for data generation, particularly with children and young people, and the discussion surfaced many questions about adaptation and analysis that those present were keen to pursue further.
Dr Ellen Davenport-Pleasance — Egg Donors' Narratives and Why Qualitative Research Matters for Reproductive Policy
Ellen Davenport-Pleasance, Research Fellow at London Women's Clinic and Honorary Fellow at City St George's University and University of Sussex, brought us into the world of her qualitative study at London Egg Bank — a study of egg donors' narratives and the complex decisions, identities and experiences that shape them.
Ellen uses narrative timeline interviewing as her core method: an approach in which participants create a timeline of their life, with significant events and experiences marked out in their own terms. The method has a particular power in this context because donors' decisions are often bound up with events that are temporally distant from one another — things that only become meaningful when you can see them in relation across time. The timeline externalises that relational structure, handing something of the interpretive process back to the participant.
The ethical terrain of this research, Ellen made clear, is complex. Not all egg donors have disclosed their decision to people in their lives; some have told certain people, others nobody at all. Recruitment and initial communication therefore require real sensitivity — the researcher must hold open the possibility that this identity may be private, and approach accordingly.
Ellen's talk concluded with a challenge directed outward — at the systems in which qualitative research operates. Policy and evidence environments, she argued, often struggle to understand what qualitative research offers. But the picture is complicated: even quantitative research is sometimes marginalised in favour of anecdotal accounts, which carry the power of story without the rigour of systematic inquiry. The answer is not to dismiss the power of stories — quotations and lived experiences can be genuinely compelling in policy contexts — but to be able to articulate clearly what qualitative research offers that an anecdote does not.
The breakout discussion took up this challenge directly. The conversation became a nuanced unpacking of why anecdotal accounts can be valued over rigorous qualitative inquiry: partly, participants suggested, because of a genuine lack of understanding about what makes qualitative research distinct, but also because stories carry a kind of power that academic framing can sometimes diminish. The challenge, then, is to convey the depth and rigour of qualitative analysis without losing the humanity that makes it compelling — a tension that, the group agreed, is not easily resolved, but that naming clearly is a necessary first step. The discussion also went deeper into the specific sensitivities of Ellen's topic: the complexities of disclosure, the still-present stigma around egg donation, and the particular intricacies that arise when donors consider whether and how to tell their own children.
Final Thoughts
What united all three talks, I thought, was a shared conviction that qualitative and participatory research does not merely supplement or illustrate quantitative evidence — it reveals something that other approaches cannot. Whether working with children navigating public services, young people in contact with the justice system, or egg donors navigating identity and disclosure, all three speakers were making the case — explicitly and by example — for methods that take people's meanings seriously.
At the same time, none of them were naïve about the contexts in which this work lands. The advocacy that the event's title calls for is not abstract; it happens in policy meetings, in funding bids, in conversations with institutional gatekeepers. Critical Conversations, at its best, is a space to think through how to do it better — and this session left me with a great deal to think about.
Resources from the session can be found on the event Padlet:
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