Search

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]

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 article explores the potential role of sustained social media use in longitudinal qualitative research. We introduce the research design and methodology of a research project exploring sustained use (five or more years) of the social network site Facebook among young people in their twenties. By focusing on this group, we seek to uncover how ‘growing up’ stories are told and archived online, and how disclosure practices (what people say and share on social media) change over time. We question how we can understand the ‘digital trace’ inscribed through the Facebook Timeline as a longitudinal narrative text. We argue that ‘scrolling back’ through Facebook with participants as ‘co-analysts’ of their own digital traces can add to the qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) tradition. QLR and the scroll back method attend to a similar set of concerns around change over time, the depth of inquiry, and uncovering rigorous, rich life narratives. We explore limitations (especially around intentionality) and ethical challenges, while also arguing for the inclusion of these often highly personal, deep, co-constructed digital texts in qualitative longitudinal research. We also consider how the scroll back method could apply to other digital media, as the sites and applications that people use diversifies and changes over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]