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This paper delves into the creative methodology adopted whilst engaging in a research study with five families whose young children (aged between 8 and 10 years old) were excluded from school due to social, emotional and mental health difficulties. The complex needs surrounding these families often lead to them being labelled as hard-to-reach and therefore challenging to engage in research. This paper will explore these challenges, the ethical dilemmas that emerged, the constant observation throughout, the reflexivity and flexibility required by the researchers and the relationships forged. Using various creative methods as part of the Mosaic approach both the children and their parents were able to play a part in the meaning-making process throughout the research journey. The culmination of the research study took place in the format of a multi-family group session which provided a safe space for an intergenerational encounter allowing for the children's and parent's authentic voices to continue to be heard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the lasting impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on research ethics in social sciences by focusing on the concept of vulnerability. We unpack the current conceptualisations of vulnerability and their limitations and argue for the need to reconceptualise vulnerability as multidimensional, consisting of both universal and contextual dimensions, as well as their dynamic interplay. Multidimensional vulnerability is inspired by and relevant to social science research during the pandemic but can also be useful in other contexts such as climate change or conflict. The paper puts forwards several considerations about how this revised concept of vulnerability may be useful when evaluating ethical dimensions of social science research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper experiments with the use of literary analysis for the interpretation of participants' writing. The dataset comprises 56 'Reports' in response to a 2019 Mass Observation Directive. Mass Observation is a British archive. Its aim is to record everyday life through correspondents' responses to thrice-yearly Directives. The paper contributes to lyrical sociology with its development of 'textural' analysis. The 2019 Directive asked volunteers to submit reports on what was on their mantelpieces and also about their treasured objects. I found this writing highly allusive of two literary works: Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia, and the 'Catalogue of Ships' in Homer's ancient Greek epic poem, the Iliad. This led me not only to review the earlier reports but also to consider how literature can enrich the interpretation of participants' writing. In conclusion, I argue that following up allusive 'hunches' can result in fruitful literary analysis, as a 'textural' approach to sociological method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Articulating the complexities of relational wellbeing can be challenging at the best of times, and even more complex during periods of heightened stress and uncertainty. Taking inspiration from feminist materialisms and recent writings on material methods, we explore the potential of object interviews to reveal the material-discursive dimensions of women's experiences of wellbeing during the pandemic. In this paper we describe our research process conducting object interviews with 38 women living in Aotearoa New Zealand from a range of socio-economic, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds. We explore the potential and challenges of object interviews for surfacing new ways of knowing (theoretically, methodologically, and cross-culturally) wellbeing beyond human-oriented health, medical and social-constructionist models, and towards more multidimensional and relational understandings. This paper offers our reflections and learnings about the process of re-turning object interviews and the potential of such approaches for evoking complex ways of knowing wellbeing during and beyond pandemic times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers' reflexivity usually focuses on the spatiality and sociality of their ethnographic fieldwork. As a result, the temporal context of their positionality, whereby their various identities interact with one another at different research phases, is often overlooked. This paper adopts an agentic intersectional approach and draws from our separate studies of Thai migrant women in Belgium and Hong Kong to unpack the temporality of the power dynamics between study participants and us (the researchers). Through this reflexive exercise, we identify three salient aspects: first, different identities of the researchers intersect at each phase of the study; second, researchers are dependent on gatekeepers and study participants, notably during the data-gathering phase; and third, the changing researcher–participant dynamics throughout the research process are embedded in broader relations of power that encompass social institutions and migrant/ethnic networks. Hence, researchers' self-discipline and constant awareness of positionality are of utmost importance for achieving well-situated knowledge (re)production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a multi-method olfactory inquiry to document the rich ways in which children's sense of smell is embodied and embedded in an interplay of senses and socio-spatial relationships. I approach olfaction as a conceptual strategy and connect it to socio-material and socio-spatial theories to illustrate the ways in which close empirical attention to olfaction can provide new insights into children's sensory experiences. An olfactory research inquiry rests on traditional (e.g. SmellMaps and SmellLogs) and speculative (e.g. Ododata and Olfactoscapes) olfactory techniques that invite adults' and children's agentic responses to odours through relational, dynamic, and non-linguistic modes. As a critical sub-methodology of sensory inquiries, olfactory inquiry can help us re-think normative, homogenizing, mind-body relations in early childhood research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of critical research, there is significant interest about the extent and forms of the researcher's proactive engagement with marginalized and excluded communities being researched. However, it is not always clear what makes this involvement part of the research, or how much it serves as a moral position located in the process of building relationships with the community being researched. Based on a retrospective and reflexive observation of extended ethnographic fieldwork, between 2005 and 2016, with Israel's Mountain Jewish Community, this paper presents an analysis of Research from an Active-Involved Critical Stance (RAICS). In the conceptual-theoretical dimension, this position is anchored in the theory of intersubjective relationships, critical ethnography, and community-based participatory research. With respect to the structural aspect, RAICS will be explicated through the various positions taken up by the researcher within the field, and across three stages in the development of the relationship with the community during the study, namely: the store-windows; behind the scenes; and onstage. Eight principles of RAICS will be presented. Finally, RAICS will be discussed in the context of developments in the critical research field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This methodological paper connects posthuman conceptualizations of voice with artistic research and examines whether it opens toward different registers and levels of embodied and aesthetic forms of knowing that cut across normative accounts of what it means to know. We start from what Patti Lather calls 'a praxis of stuck places' and ask how to give voice to experiences such as chronic illness and pain, while at the same time disrupting representational forms of illness and pain. To investigate this, we first critically engage with the popular genre of the health diary and its representational form. Secondly, we explore how Lisa A. Mazzei concept of 'voice without subject' can support us in disrupting the normative and representational production of voice, while working with a failing voice. Finally, we analyze the sound installation, A Borrowed Diary —made by M. Broeckmeyer, and explore how it opens up alternative approaches to voice and chronic pain. We will argue that making 'voice without subject' work, touch, and resonate can impact the lives of people who often remain unheard, in that it acknowledges experiences and expressions that are mostly not validated. Creating with 'voice without subject' makes tangible how personal experiences, however, temporarily, contribute to the bigger picture of how we look at and listen to people with illnesses and/or disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers conducting community-based action research (CBAR) become immersed in their field site, developing close relationships and enabling members of the community to pursue social action. We contribute a nuanced analysis of the impact of CBAR on those who participate in the method, particularly participants who live rurally. Situating this work in the history and prior methodological examinations of CBAR, we demonstrate the critical relationship between this research approach and the rural landscape. Our findings speak to two research questions: how do participatory- and otherwise community-based, action-oriented research methods impact those who participate in research? And, how do researchers and research participants make sense of this impact? Using interview, observation, and photographic data, our analysis indicates that community members' perceptions of CBAR exist on a spectrum situated around two key, but fluid, positions: the 'trusted outsider' and the 'affective collaborator.' Our findings provide researchers with a stronger methodological foundation to approach community-based, action-oriented research with an ethic of care. Further, our findings provide methodologists with a better understanding of the multi-directional impact of doing CBAR and the ways we can use this information to do CBAR ethically and effectively. In this way, our paper contributes to a growing body of scholarship regarding the practice and impact of collaborative, community-based research approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engaging in 'reflexive practice' throughout the research process (Benson and O'Reilly, 2022) and a 'reflexivity of discomfort' (Hamdan, 2009) through an intersectional lens, this article presents a reflective account of accessing and conducting observations and interviews at a South Asian women's organisation, in North England, to explore Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim (PBM) lone motherhood. It critically explores how researchers' own subjectivities and intersecting identities – in this case, my intersecting identities and positionalities as a young British Pakistani Muslim women, researcher and volunteer – impact interactions in different circumstances with different groups of participants and the importance of having continuous critical self-awareness. Moving beyond simplistic insider–outsider debates, the paper contributes towards further developing reflexivity debates taking an 'intersectional reflexivity' approach. It argues for thinking about the research process and engagements in the field as socially constructed, changing, adapting and negotiated overtime and to utilise intersectionality to unpick broader categories. Finally, it encourages researchers to adopt reflexivity in their research practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Side comments and conversations in focus groups can pose challenges for facilitators. Rather than seeing side comments as problematic behavior or "failed" data, we argue that they can add to and deepen analyses. Drawing on focus group data with grade nine students from a study on early work, in this methodological paper we discuss three patterns. First, side comments have highlighted where participants required clarification, and illustrated their views and questions about the research process. Second, side comments added new data to our analysis, including personal reflections, connections to others' comments, and information about participants' uncertainties about the research topics. Third, these comments offered insight into peer relations and dynamics, including participants' reflections on age, and how they deployed gender relations in their discussions. Provided that their use fits within established ethical protocols, we argue that there is a place for attention to side comments, especially in focus group research with young people where adult-teen hierarchies and peer dynamics might lead young people to engage more with peers than directly respond to researchers' questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on two multilingual qualitative datasets (Korean/English and German/English), this paper examines the dual role and positionalities of two researchers who simultaneously act as translators, as well as the implications of this dual role for multilingual qualitative research. This work is informed by transnational feminist translation studies and transnational feminist approaches to qualitative research, and founded on the two researchers' intimate familiarity with their participants' languages, contexts, and meaning-making processes. Considering the complexity of this familiarity, this work presents unique dilemmas—challenges and opportunities—with respect to translating, representing, and writing about multilingual qualitative data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I question how a researcher might fulfil the unique adequacy requirement when studying novices in a setting in which the researcher is already a member. Since novices by definition lack the expected competencies in a setting, having unique adequacy for novice methods may appear oxymoronic. However, this paper suggests that unique adequacy requires enacting specific ways of 'seeing' as part of accomplishing local order; once one is competent, it becomes difficult to enact incompetent action in a locally adequate way, suggesting one can actually lose unique adequacy. Furthermore, as any given situated involves a multifaceted set of competencies, exactly which or whose competencies are relevant is both an analysts' and members' issue to solve. With reference to examples, I discuss how analysts and members delimit the 'provinces of meaning' in the process of finding what is locally adequate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conducting research with young participants presents numerous challenges, particularly in terms of representation as the researcher endeavours to listen to children's voices in order to understand and portray their perspectives accurately. Since the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child established children have the right to express their views and have these taken seriously in matters that affect them, researchers have developed a variety of multimodal methods to capture the children's perspectives. The aim of this paper is to describe an innovative methodological approach to recording ethnographic observations of young children (aged four to six) through a visual mode: the cartoon. The article describes the methodology of a specific research project that explored young children's communicative practices in a super-diverse environment. Adopting a flexible approach to research and putting children's suggestions into practice led to the co-production cartoons that used the participants' self-portraits to visually portray the researcher's written observations of the children. The paper presents vignettes, evidencing how the use of self-portraits meant the cartoons were more engaging, held greater personal significance and opened up spaces for dialogue, leading the researcher to uncover deeper insights. This has important implications for any research that endeavours to listen to the participants' perspectives, but where verbal or written forms of communication are impeded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops and applies a methodology of qualitative inquiry that equips researchers to capture how social actors produce and contest accepted forms of knowledge at the margins of mainstream globalizing discourses in times of crisis. Standing at the intersection between conceptual and empirical research, our methodology builds on the common epistemological premises of 'narrative', as stories constructed and enacted in social life, and 'practice', as tasks and projects composed by 'doings' and 'sayings'. Overcoming the dualism between 'action' and 'discourse' in traditional social theory, this methodology integrates narrative theory and practice theory into a joint framework for fieldwork and interviews. The use of the narrative-practice methodology in ethnographic case studies – such as interpreters' experience of the COVID-19 pandemic in Qatar – allows researchers to gain analytical granularity on participants' storied practice and practiced stories of the crisis, to harness 'peripheral' knowledge and refashion public discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers are increasingly interested in why people want to participate in qualitative interview studies, particularly what they hope to gain from participating. The present paper contributes to this research agenda by analysing the motivations of victims of interpersonal violence: a group that is considered ethically challenging to involve in research, given their history of being intruded upon. The analysis is based on 174 qualitative interviews from three separate studies: two on intimate partner violence and one on sexual assault. A key finding is that many victims welcome the opportunity to participate and often use the interviews for their own purposes. We identified three different 'participant orientations', or ways victims relate to the interview and the research, including 'telling for oneself', 'telling for others' and 'telling for the researcher'. We discuss how these orientations imply different ethical contracts between the participant and researcher and their links to recruitment methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses David Graeber's work on the moral grounds of economic relations as a vantage point from which to reflect on the ethics of giving back in field research, drawing on my own fieldwork experiences in Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka as well as examples from existing literature. I argue that Graeber's exposition of different moral logics for economic relations – hierarchy, exchange and communism – provides a valuable set of conceptual distinctions for thinking through what is owed by, and to, researchers in different research interactions. In addition to a recognition of the incommensurability of what is often being exchanged, this approach responds to the danger of researchers setting the terms of ethical interaction, through distant institutional processes and practices built on logics of exchange, in ways that might constrain the ability of interlocutors to meaningfully articulate their own positions in fieldwork relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within qualitative research, much can be learned from the influence of researcher positionality on the research process. Reflecting upon ethnographic fieldwork undertaken for a doctoral study, this paper explores how researcher positionality not only shapes research motivations but also situates the researcher and the 'researched', impacting how data is created and interpreted. There is a long history of engaging with positionality in qualitative research, however, oftentimes this engagement is purely descriptive, providing a 'shopping list' of characteristics and stating if these are shared or not with participants. It is important for engagement with reflexivity to go beyond providing a 'shopping list' of positionality statements to develop deeper discussions about the fluidity of positionality across the research process. Using the previously established concept of 'kitchen table reflexivity', I reflect on how talk allows researchers to outline shifts and adaptability in positionality as research progresses. I expand this concept to argue that kitchen table reflexivity can occur in conversations during fieldwork with participants, utilising a range of in/visible tools at the researcher's disposal. For example, the spaces between fieldwork encounters, the 'waiting field', is often where observations and informal discussions with participants take place. Using fieldnotes and interview data, this paper outlines how positionality fluctuates and interweaves with the theoretical, methodological, and analytical approach taken. The paper concludes by restating the importance of meaningful engagement with positionality throughout qualitative research, in order to avoid static and hollow positionality statements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that trust cannot be taken for granted in long-term participatory research and promotes greater consideration to conceptualizing the trusting process as fluid and fragile. This awareness by researchers can reveal to them how the passing of time shapes and reshapes the nature of trusting relationships and their constant negotiation and re-negotiation. The paper draws together literature from different disciplines on the themes of trust, temporality and participatory research and outcomes from interviews and workshops undertaken for The Trust Map project to focus on two key moments that reveal the fragility of trust. These are the subtlety of disruption and trust on trial and trust at a distance. We discuss how trust was built over time through processes of interaction that were continually tested, incremental and participatory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the possibilities of drawing as a method of researching social representations. The theory of social representations focuses on studying the forms, contents, and functions of socially shared common knowledge. In this paper, we (1) present the central premises of social representations theory, (2) elaborate drawing as a visual research method, and (3) synthesize how the drawing method may promote and diversify our understanding of social representations. We suggest that the drawing method is especially fruitful in the analysis of objectification process (how something abstract is made tangible); cognitive polyphasia (the idea of the simultaneous existence of diverse and contradicting social representations); and the different levels of analysis in which social representations become observable: ontogenesis (individual level), microgenesis (social interaction level), and sociogenesis (societal level). Through these insights, this paper advances the current understanding of the drawing method in qualitative social representations research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explain and describe the use of presuppositional interviews as means of the researcher being able to expose their own, often unknown, assumptions about the phenomena of interest. Within this, we provide a philosophical and practical account for the development and use of a presuppositional interview from an insider perspective to expose insights which influence researcher reflexivity and directly impact on the research process. Author A's hermeneutic phenomenological study seeks to gain insights into the lived experience of children learning mathematics in outdoor environments, such as forests and woodland. The paper describes how the reflexive method of presuppositional interviewing helped him to understand more about his research position and find a clearing in his 'Being in the Wood.' A template for a presupposition interview schedule is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the era of visual media, cities, and society are represented, experienced, and interpreted through images. The need for interdisciplinary visual approaches, therefore, is indisputable. By focusing on cinema, this paper aims to develop a conceptual, methodological framework through which theory helps a broad range of researchers in social sciences, humanities, and arts interpret the represented phenomenon. Based on Peirce's model of signs, the framework provides the basis for a dynamic interpretation of the city and society. This paper shows that Peircean cinesemiotics takes advantage of theory in three ways: First, as the basis that provides scholars with clues necessary for identifying eligible "image-signs"; second, as the guiding framework that helps them reach a final interpretation; third, as ideas are being criticized from visual perspectives. As an example of its application, using Jane Jacobs' "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," the final part of the paper applies Peircean cinesemiotics to an image-sign from Death Wish (2018) and interprets it as the representation of safety/crime in a neighborhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how solicited paper diaries, and the accompanying materials, are carefully handled over the course of one research project. It foregrounds the value of attending to mundane moments with research materials, by tracing tangible material encounters together with intimate fieldnote reflections. Through drawing upon theories of materiality with feminist and relational ethics of care, this article centralises paper diaries as a key mediator of relationships and care within research. It considers the micro processes of choosing diaries, posting them, receiving and storing them and tracing the emotionally charged moments as a researcher in everyday research situations. Such reflections, from the perspective of the researcher, look to offer insights into research relationalities and care. It argues that these momentary fieldwork reflections extend understandings of material methodologies by emphasising relational intimacies as a researcher and connects material and sensory understandings with feminist ethics of care and researcher reciprocities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a fruitful tension in ethnomethodological work. On the one hand, real-world data are used to rein in analytical privilege. On the other, conceptual discussions necessarily take place in a more open analytical space. Describing settings in detail and thinking about things in the abstract are both essential components of the ethnomethodological project. What ethnographies might consist in complicates this picture. Garfinkel initially deflated the concept of 'ethnography', using it to refer to how all members of society make sense of their world. Sacks, on the other hand, initially construed his sociological project as a more rigorous form of professional ethnography. Ethnographic methods rightly remain an important tool for ethnomethodological analyses. They provide an empirical grounding for analysis and facilitate 'thinking about things' in a more open manner than some other forms of data. This paper argues that ethnographic analyses more generally can be used as ethnomethodological resources, (re)introducing the idea that others' fieldwork and analyses are legitimate resources for ethnomethodological work. Some materials from Elijah Anderson's classic ethnography A Place on the Corner are used to illustrate the possibilities taking this approach might offer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, pushed particularly by COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns, virtual photovoice studies have emerged as an alternative modality of photovoice. Alongside this trend are questions about virtual photovoice practice and methodological questions of participation. This paper interrogates these questions using an Australian photovoice research with LGBTQ+ multicultural older people. Threading through the photovoice stages of conceptualisation, recruitment, photovoice production and discussions, it discusses participation in relation to both in-person and virtual photovoice literatures, highlights challenges and new opportunities. Reflecting on virtual photovoice as a method and a methodology, it positions virtual photovoice as a comparable choice that researchers can make. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID 19 pandemic, Online Asynchronous Focus Groups (OAFG) through WhatsApp were conducted to explore women's experiences in the context of Congenital Syphilis prevention in Colombia. This paper discusses issues raised by the OAFGs (not least in relation to face-to-face focus groups). After a review of the literature on online and offline focus groups, there is a consideration of some key features of our OAFGs. In particular, we note how silence, presence, attention, continuity and multiplicity manifested in our OAFGs. We suggest that rather than regarding OAFGs as inferior to the 'gold standard' of face-to-face focus groups, our OAFGs raise important questions about our assumptions about focus group methodology. For instance, what counts as participant engagement, what comprises 'useful' social data, and what constitute the boundaries of a focus group all emerge as critical issues. We go on to reflect on some of the implications of these issues for the fruitfulness of OAFG methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a methodological framework for event-ethnographic research in online and offline settings based on the authors' ethnographic experiences in the fields of environmental governance and sociotechnical transition before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on empirical event studies, we outline the particularities of organized events as ethnographic research sites, identifying key challenges related to the spatio-temporal ephemerality, socio-material infrastructures and interactive unboundedness of events. We address these challenges along three axes of reflection, asking how we (1) attend, (2) infrastructure, and (3) take part in organized events. The framework we propose promotes a co-constructive understanding of organized events and raises broader methodological issues regarding power dynamics, our role as ethnographers in transdisciplinary contexts and fair and transparent ethnographic data collection. The framework is designed to explore how the (post-)pandemic transition from real-world to virtual event interactions affects both our research fields and our ethnographic research in transdisciplinary contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is an ageing population in Europe which acts as an increasingly influential social and economic force, there remains limited scholarship concerning the involvement of older people in research. This paper responds to the question of how visual participatory research engages older people through three illustrative case studies, set in England and Italy, all of which incorporated different visual elements within their participatory design. These cases highlight; the value of the visual as a trigger for memories as an entry point for research discussions, that the sharing of experiences is facilitated by both the participatory and visual elements of the approach and that greater engagement is forthcoming once trust is established through the socialisation of older research participants. Reflections and good practice suggestions are offered to other qualitative researchers on the practicalities of adopting this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data generated from a 'video booth', this paper explores how LGBT+ identifying individuals and allies navigate public visibility in front of a video camera. The video booth was set up in eight different NHS organisations in the UK to enable users to record short messages (30 s maximum) about their working life and/or experiences of LGBT+ employee networks, using a self-operated tablet system. The workplace context had an impact on how people represented themselves in front of the camera with prioritisation of professional identities and positive work-self. LGBT+ visibility was further masked by the inclusion of allies. We also discuss ethics and privacy issues related to using video booth methodology and signal how this methodology can best be used for future research purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are participants and researchers agreeing to when they consent to having data archived and what do they imagine the future life of their data to be? In this paper, we reflect on a project that deliberately started rather than ended with the archive. The Everyday Childhoods project invited children and their families to take part in the creation of an open access public archive documenting everyday childhoods using a range of multimedia data. Families and researchers were invited into the archive, encouraged to imagine different kinds of secondary use and to speak directly to future user of their data through short films and postcards. This paper raises questions concerning the place of the archive in different disciplinary traditions; the roles of researcher and archivist in safekeeping, gatekeeping and caring for data collections; and the place of qualitative longitudinal research as a site of innovation within a new data landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a collaborative group of university researchers and a community organizer who participated in a 2-year participatory action research (PAR) partnership reflect upon their inquiry process and analyze its effects. Authors examine the benefits, challenges, and potential of using PAR to advance educational justice and transformative goals amidst austere neoliberal education reforms, such as public school closure and state sanctioned privatization. Authors consider ways PAR can reflect emancipatory ideologies, enable social and political change, and disrupt oppressive dynamics that many urban education organizers and activists oppose. Insights pertain to cultivating community-based norms that foster collective learning, agency, and social action, while also confronting methodological tensions in the work. Such tensions pertained to varied ideas about emotionality in research, research design, and the layered power dynamics of university-community relations. Authors highlight implications for implementing justice-oriented PAR in urban education arenas affected by intensifying neoliberal political contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research note, we present a critical moment we had as a research team in our work preparing qualitative data for its analysis in which an unanticipated social justice issue was triggered. The moment was related to determining the best ways to anonymize the information—in particular, how to replace what were perceived as "male" and "female" gendered names, family relationships, and roles with the labels of "she/her/mother/daughter" or "he/his/father/son". The paper begins with a review of the main "do's and don'ts" of data preparation, followed by our reflections of the social justice issue. Through our differently positioned reflections, we complicate the task of data preparation by revealing the ways in which cis-dominance is upheld by cis-normativity, cis-genderism, and heteronormativity. We end with recommendations for practices that uphold the values and goals of social justice by resisting cis-dominance and challenging the erasures of peoples with fluid genders and identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research that 'grows apart' from its original design and proposal is not uncommon, especially when involving participatory and creative methods. However, the disconnect between research intentions and research realization is seldom probed for the insights offered; this paper addresses this gap. Taking up the conceptual lens of research imaginaries, this paper dives into the tensions and discoveries experienced in between the design and the practice of a multi-site participatory research project. The study involved two groups of young people, in two cities in two countries, with a focus on digital lives. In a commitment to collaboration with artists, senior researchers, research assistants, and young people in community spaces, a complex project emerged. This paper describes the tensions and possibilities of an emergent methodology and in doing so argues for increased attention to the movement of research designs; rather than the adherence to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fieldwork encounters are not only contingent to biographical subjectivities, but are mediated by a confluence of identity, place and embodiment. This paper offers reflexive accounts of researchers with various socio-cultural and disciplinary backgrounds, who collaborated as a team to examine the varied funerary experiences and needs of established minorities and recent migrants in England and Wales. Focusing on the researchers' varied personal experiences with death and bereavement and on their performances of minority and majority ethnic and migrant identities, the paper highlights the mediated and embodied nature of fieldwork. It argues that reflection on the various aspects of intersectional researcher identity is necessary for a rigorous fieldwork practice that takes transparency and politics into account. This facilitates a deeper understanding of the positionality of both researchers and interlocutors, and the situated co-production of knowledge. In doing so, the paper illustrates that conducting research with a diverse team of researchers contributes to better understanding the complexity and multifacetedness of social phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates on positionality and partisanship in the research process are long-standing, complex and often highly contentious. Engaging with, and contributing to, both these key debates, this paper introduces the concept of victim-as-researcher. This draws from the author's experiences of undertaking research in Trinidad and Tobago with a group of offenders who had committed similar offences to that which the researcher was herself a victim. There is a paucity of literature which speaks to the experiences of victims of serious, violent crime who subsequently engage in qualitative research with offenders who have been convicted of offences similar to the ones experienced by the researcher and which, therefore, can elicit trauma whilst in the field and through analysis. This paper aims to extend the methodological literature on positionality and victimology by foregrounding the victim-as-researcher as an important category in reflexive sociological and criminological research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides insights from experiences in data gathering and recruitment from two research projects on disability/mental health in Ghana. The focus of the study explores stigma amongst individuals diagnosed with mental illness and their caregivers. The study investigates the positioning of the researcher in a superior light by participants which often wrests power from those who should be considered the true experts of their own circumstances. Inequality in the interview process thus carried the risk of impacting the quality of the data, as some participants did not consider themselves as 'experts' of their condition. The paper explores strategies for addressing these challenges of hierarchy and inequality in the research process in the Global South. Based on the study, we report on our experiences as follows: (1) ensuring that participants are empowered to engage with researchers; and (2) training local researchers to engage in culturally sensitive research processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on a sensitive and potentially stigmatising topic such as 'radicalisation' begs for a robust ethical framework. Ethical procedures, issuing from an institutional ethics commission, are not sufficient to manage these risks. Arguably, collaborative and participatory research is best suited to overcome the risks of doing research on such a sensitive topic as well as the hierarchy and inequality in the relationship between researchers, gatekeepers and participants. To co-construct a participatory ethical framework in this context, 22 social workers were asked about the core ethical values of their own professional context. In this paper, these social work ethics are brought in tension with the practice of doing research. The paper concludes with the insight that social work ethics are not transferrable to the research context in a straightforward manner. Hierarchy and inequality (as well as much frustration) will persist if only this strategy is adopted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how sexual harassment is often mediated through the making of imagined complicities that are constructed to imply that an alliance/compliance underpins the relationship and 'justifies' the harassment. It is concerned with how the making and doing of intimacies engages with broader hierarchical structures of power, including structures of inequality. Fieldwork is viewed as a site in which the politics of intimacy exposes normative expectations and structures of inequality. Specifically, the discussion exposes how processes of Othering are mobilised by participants as a means to cultivate imagined complicities but expose discrimination. The paper calls for a reappraisal of the focus placed on building rapport and/or a sense of familiarity in qualitative research to take account of multiple forms of intimacies and risks they can entail. This is increasingly prescient in light of the renewed emphasis on participatory methods and co-production which entail closer working relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negotiating the relationships influenced by a combination of identity markers during fieldwork is an important aspect of qualitative data co-creation. Based on ethnographic research with the canal boating and enthusiast communities in the UK, this paper focuses on the mundane power dynamics and hierarchies in research situations. The paper discusses the role of humour in negotiating the interpersonal dynamics and argues for the consideration of power (im)balances in the field beyond assumptions of the researcher as definitely the advantaged side. Joking plays an important role and is used by both research participants and researchers to level the researcher–participant hierarchies as well as to reproduce and reaffirm them. This takes place on a conceptual continuum: first, in terms of their relative rigidity, whereby certain norms, opinions or value systems are reinforced; and secondly, flexibility, whereby the notions about norms and preconceived ideas might shift during the research encounter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory action research (PAR) is described in the literature as a valuable method for enhancing the power of marginalized individuals and communities by collectively producing knowledge to transform the inequalities they experience. This deviates from most social science research, where such actors are largely the subjects of data extraction. This paper reports on our experience of using PAR to examine existing food systems and ideas regarding ‘just food system transitions’ alongside Non-Governmental Organizations in Brazil, Sierra Leone, the United Kingdom and Zambia. We describe our efforts to encourage these partners to participate in the research design, data collection and analysis in line with PAR ideals. Our experience fell short of our expectations for a PAR project. While some limitations relate to the Covid-19 pandemic, this paper focuses on the structures of contemporary neoliberal academia, which, we found, actively obstructed the realization of the optimistic claims of the PAR literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper recommends a values-driven regeneration of research ethics for ethnography. In contrast to the current regulatory version of research ethics we propose a more subtle, field-oriented and traditional version, grounded in ethnographic experience. The paper is in three parts. The first part highlights the tacit assumptions of current systems of ethical approval for social research and their unintended and even perverse effects. Ethnography is the focus of the second part, where we highlight the distinctive issues for ethnographic research of current practice. In the final part we argue for a culture of ethnographic work grounded in an ethnographic understanding of social conduct and an ethic of generosity. Defined as a key-value for social sensitivity, this implies abandoning a procedural logic in favour of a values-based research culture faithful to the spirit of ethnographic and qualitative inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Email is a born-digital form of communication, which can be studied in a number of ways using a variety of methods, as with any other socially and culturally mediated phenomenon. However, despite a great number of studies, the methodologies of the studies have attracted only little attention. In this paper, we wish to extend our knowledge regarding methodological challenges in studying emails. In particular, we will consider the methodological challenges, which any scholar will encounter when email in its digital form is transformed to and preserved as an object of study. Based on a review of existing studies' archiving strategies as well as our own study on email consultations in a healthcare setting, we will examine and discuss analytical and methodological consequences of different approaches to archiving and data management of emails. We demonstrate that the archived record is shaped by its context of creation. Since collection methods and archiving tools are not neutral, we call for a greater attentiveness to this part of the research process. We conclude by outlining implications for systematic empirical research into emails as a form of communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores a case example of qualitative research that applied productive hermeneutics and the central concept, fusion of horizons. Interpretation of meaning is a fusing of the researchers' and subjects' perspectives and serves to expand understanding. The purpose is to illustrate an exemplar of qualitative research without establishing a rigid recipe of methodology. The illustration is based on in-depth observational and textual data from an applied anthropological study conducted in western Alaska with Yup'ik hunters and fishers and government agency employees as they worked towards collaborative management. The metaphor of the hermeneutical circle is showcased to help the reader understand the philosophical underpinnings and the analytical processes used to realize a meaningful interpretation. A series of organizing systems for the interpretation is described, culminating in a final organizing system to communicate a fully realized understanding of collaborative management at the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers using deliberative techniques tend to favour in-person processes. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has added urgency to the question of whether meaningful deliberative research is possible in an online setting. This paper considers the reasons for taking deliberation online, including bringing people together more easily; convening international events; and reducing the environmental impact of research. It reports on four case studies: a set of stakeholder workshops considering greenhouse gas removal technologies, convened online in 2019, and online research workshops investigating local climate strategies; as well as two in-person processes which moved online due to COVID-19: Climate Assembly UK, a Citizens' Assembly on climate change, and the Lancaster Citizens' Jury on Climate Change. It sets out learnings from these processes, concluding that deliberation online is substantively different from in-person meetings, but can meet the requirements of deliberative research, and can be a rewarding and useful process for participants and researchers alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents one aspect of a sociocultural micro-ethnographic study examining how 11- and 12-year-old children formulate meanings when working with an artist in a contemporary art gallery. My primary focus is an examination of methodological contributions emerging from an imaginative coding and analysis of children's art. Ninety-nine artworks were created in collaboration with the artist and were organised and interpreted using a constructionist interviewing coding scheme. This unorthodox approach to visual analysis unearthed information that oral accounts cannot provide alone revealing meanings which would otherwise remain dormant. By intuitively applying the coding framework I expose how participants' meanings are negotiated by appropriating and re-organising cultural concepts into personalised narratives. As such, artworks reveal participants' desires, interpretations and intentions, operating as agentic cultural producers as well as unconsciously reproducing visual epistemologies ubiquitous in Western cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a study on children, families and food messages in Victoria, Australia, we utilised a multi-methods approach that included visual data produced by primary-school aged children. Working with 50 families, we provided each child investigator with an iPad for 3–4 days and invited them to photograph family food events important to them. The analysis of visual data alongside child and family interviews revealed the diverse meaning-making practices children draw on to understand food practices at home and school. These research practices aspired to locate the researchers and children as co-creators. In this paper, we reflect on the challenges and (dis)comfort we faced as researchers as the implications of co-creation emerged and we engaged with children's voices, photos and families inside their homes. The multi-methods approach supported a comprehensive and rich engagement with commensality and pleasure in food practices at home for children, but illuminated the complex emotional and intellectual terrain of such research practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study discusses the methodological component of a research project with Sudanese musicians and their associated activist groups. The methodology included song-writing and, as such, is an example of collaborative creative research practice. Proponents of collaborative creative practice argue that the combination of aesthetic methods with ethnographic and participatory research methods brings both epistemological and ethical dividends. This paper considers whether these alleged epistemological and ethical advantages bore out in this research project. While confirming some benefits, my study also shows evidence of underlying tensions between aesthetic 'micro-methods' and ethnographic and participatory traditions of knowledge production. In relation to the alleged epistemological dividends, I argue that autoethnographic embedding in collaborative creative practice is alone insufficient. It requires a theoretical framework which theorises the relationship between one player's musical experience and another's. Only with this, can the sensory experiences of the researcher be used to inform analysis of participant observations and interviews. The autoethnographic experiences of the researcher are not findings in themselves. In relation to the ethical dividends, unlike other arts-based research, I found that the aesthetic micro-methods in this study did not naturally lend themselves to participant empowerment. The pursuit of aesthetic goals has its own division of labour which can lead to the deprioritisation of self-expression and co-learning which constitute the primary aims of classical participatory research. Overall, collaborative creative practice did enhance this research project but there are important caveats. To reflect these, I aruge that creative collaboration should not be considered as a simple sub-set of either ethnographic or participatory research but as a method in its own right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on the value of diary methods in the context of a qualitative, longitudinal narrative inquiry exploring the higher education decision-making of further education students in England. Event-based diaries were used alongside interviews and focus groups over a 14-month period to gain in-depth insights into the reasons and influences informing their decision-making trajectories. I explore the challenges, successful approaches and advantages of employing diary methods with young people in this context. Challenges consisted of maintaining participant engagement, which was overcome by combining methods and incorporating a reactive co-participatory element. Yet, a number of advantages emerged from participants' engagement with diary keeping which enhanced the richness of the data; this inspired deeper reflections on decision-making and influences and provided a private space for participants to disclose personal difficulties that could not be obtained via interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper points out some problematic aspects of qualitative research based on interviews and uses examples from mental health. The narrative approach is explored while inquiring if the reality of life here is forced into the formula of a chronological story. The hermeneutic approach, in general, is also examined, and we ask if the reality of life in this scenario becomes caught up in a web of interpretations. Inspired by ideas from Bakhtin and phenomenology, we argue for interview-based research that stays with unresolvedness and constantly question the web of interpretations and narratives that determine our experiences. This also chimes with certain dialogical practices in mental health in which tolerance of uncertainty is the guiding principle. Concludingly, we suggest that interview-based research could be a practice of 'un-resolving' in which researchers, together with the participants, look for cracks, contradictions, and complexities to prevent the qualitative fallacies of well-organized meanings and well-composed stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The staccato rhythms of experiential time remain obscured in much of the literature on participatory research, where time is treated as a reassuring constant – a backdrop for human activity. This article addresses the discordances between lived temporalities and existing theorisations of participatory methodologies. It takes participatory research with lone child migrants as a particularly rich case to think with, given the proliferation of contradictory and often punitive applications of time these young people encounter in their interactions with migration and welfare regimes. The core argument developed is that unless temporality is given due theoretical and methodological attention, aims of contesting and unsettling inequities through participatory research will have limited success and can wind up reproducing exclusions and oppressions. In response to these critiques, the paper temporalizes participatory research through three reconstructions: working with and against time, de-centring shared time and collectivising the time of participatory research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]