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When Methods Meet: users of social science research methods in dialogue

By Scottish Graduate School of Social Science

Location

University of Edinburgh

Evolution House, Board room 78 West Port Edinburgh EH1 2LE United Kingdom

Description

This event will explore and promote innovative pairings of research methods. It is built around three pairings involving a user of each method brought together with their counterpart, along with a discussant, with a view to exploring the potential for the methods to be used in combination. The format for the conversations will be: a short description on the key elements of each method by their proponents, an assessment of why the methods are not already routinely used in combination, and the potential benefits/challenges of combining them. The discussants will then identify questions around which to structure an inclusive debate. The day will start with a short introduction to set the scene, and conclude with more general discussions about the lessons that can be learned regarding how innovative pairings may be developed and promoted.

Event date: Monday 28 November.

Venue: Evolution House, 78 West Port, Edinburgh.

Programme

9.30 arrival, tea/coffee

10.00 Welcome and Introduction Tessa Parkes (University of Stirling) and Graham Crow (University of Edinburgh)

10.10 WMM conversation #1 and Q&A: Erin Jessee (University of Strathclyde) and Hayden Lorimer (University of Glasgow) ‘Oral history and animated archive’

11.10 coffee break

11.30 WMM conversation #2 and Q&A: Ruth Bartlett (University of Southampton) and Sarah Rhynas (University of Edinburgh) ‘Diary methods and photovoice’

12.30 Discussant-led reflection on methodological innovation, training needs and WMM resources available so far at http://www.socsciscotland.ac.uk/skills_and_training/methods_resources

13.00 lunch

13.45 WMM conversation #3 and Q&A: John Scott (University of Exeter) and Mark Tranmer (University of Glasgow) ‘Social network analysis and multi-level modelling’

14.45 coffee break

15.00 Discussant led consideration of the themes emerging during the day, led by Frank Bechhofer (University of Edinburgh).

16.00-16.30 Where next for When Methods Meet?

As of 23 November we do not accept further bookings online. Please contact Graham Crow by email for last-minute availability.

This event is sponsored by the International Journal of Social Research Methodology seminar competition. It is hosted by the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science, which is home to the ESRC’s Doctoral Training Centre in Scotland.

The International Journal of Social Research Methodology is a forum for on-going and emerging methodological debates across a range of approaches including qualitative, quantitative, mixed and comparative methods, as these relate to philosophical, theoretical, ethical, political and practical issues. In addition to the regular issues, virtual special issues on special themes are also published, including: Visual Research Methods, Feminist Research Methods, Survey Non-Response, Mixed Methods and Health Research Methods.

Follow the Journal on twitter: @IJSRM

PLEASE NOTE: This event will be filmed.

The WMM video series

Molly Andrews (University of East London) and Graham Crow (University of Edinburgh): Biographical Interviews and Imagined Futures Essay Writing

Martin Corley and Charlotte Kemp (University of Edinburgh): Laboratory and natural experiments [upcoming]

Arek Dakessian (University of Edinburgh) and David Manderson (University of the West of Scotland): Ethnographic video and phenomenological creative writing

Sarah Doyle and Tara Fenwick (University of Stirling): Socio-material approaches: Actor-network theory and Karen Barad’s diffractive methodology

Sam Hillyard (Durham University) and Daniel Nettle (Newcastle University): Experiments and Ethnography

Katarzyna Kosmala and Anna Sznajder (University of the West of Scotland): Gender sensitive methods [upcoming]

Mhairi MacKenzie and Laurence Moore (University of Glasgow): Qualitative interviewing and Randomised controlled trials

Eric Laurier and Shari Sabeti (University of Edinburgh): Visual Methods and Comics

Jen Roberts (University of Strathclyde) and Andrew Thompson (University of Edinburgh): Surveys and Citizens' Juries

Notes on contributors

Ruth Bartlett (University of Southampton) is an Associate Professor within the Faculty of Health Sciences, programme lead for the MSc Complex Care in Older People, Co-director of the University’s Doctoral Training Centre in Dementia Care and Principal Investigator of an interdisciplinary, cross-faculty research project funded by the Alzheimer’s Society. Previous research projects have been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, national charities and local authorities. Ruth’s work focuses on people with dementia and active ageing; and together with Prof O’Conner (University of British Columbia) she has been instrumental in bringing a citizenship lens to this field. Ruth is lead author of Broadening the Dementia Debate: Towards social citizenship and has published and presented papers at key conferences related to people with dementia and active ageing for over twelve years. Ruth is an innovative methodologist with expertise in creative and participatory methods and working with artists to communicate research; she has produced a range of high-quality outputs, including a toolkit, article and workshop for the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science and National Centre for Research Methods on using diary method in social research. Together with Prof Milligan (Lancaster) she has published a book on ‘What is Diary Method’ and is currently co-authoring a text on creative data collection methods to use with for people with dementia.

Erin Jessee (University of Strathclyde) is an oral historian and cultural anthropologist affiliated with the Scottish Oral History Centre. She specializes in narratives related to genocide and related mass atrocities in Rwanda and the surrounding Great Lakes of Africa region. To date, she has published peer-reviewed articles with History in Africa, Oral History Review, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, and Forensic Science International, and a policy brief and discussion paper with the Canada-based Centre for International Governance Innovation. She also has a book manuscript, Negotiating Genocide: The Politics of History in Post-genocide Rwanda currently under review with Palgrave MacMillan's Studies in Oral History series, as well as two forthcoming journal articles with Memory Studies and Conflict and Society. Her teaching specialties include: Genocide in the 20th Century, Rwanda: Peace, Conflict, and the Politics of History, Oral History Theory and Practice, and going forward, Advanced Oral History.

Hayden Lorimer (University of Glasgow) is professor of Cultural Geography. His research interests include cultural and historical geography and histories and philosophies of geography. In his research, he explores the social history of geographical ideas and topographic cultures. His attentions focus on the not-too-distant past and the almost-present, considering the geographical dimensions of a series of themes: landscape, nature, fieldwork, science, memory, mobility and biography. Some of these themes featured in two series of essays ('The Naturalists' and 'Running the World') broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 2009 and 2010. His most recent publications include ‘“Landscapism” at the speed of light: darkness and illumination in motion’, Geografiska Annaler. Series B: Human Geography, 97(1), pp. 1-16 (with T Edensor); ‘Standards of beauty: considering the lives of W. A. Poucher’, GeoHumanities, 1(1), pp. 51-79; and ‘The ruin in question’, Performance Research, 20(3), pp. 58-66. (with S Murray)

Sarah Rhynas (University of Edinburgh) graduated in nursing from Edinburgh University in 1998 and worked as a staff nurse in Medicine for the Elderly and Acute Medicine at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. She also enjoyed a variety of voluntary sector experiences, helping to manage and run services supporting frail older people and specialist day care for those living with dementia. After completing an MSc by research part time while working as a senior staff nurse in Acute Medicine, she embarked on PhD work, pursuing interests in the nursing care of people living with dementia. Since completing the PhD Sarah has held a teaching post within Nursing Studies and has recently moved to a research post which allows her to continue with work around dementia and the nursing care of older people as well as pursuing an interest in Alcohol Related Brain Damage (ARBD). Her research interests focus on the nursing care of older people, sociological approaches in nursing research and the nursing care of those living with dementia. Sarah is also interested in the nursing care of those who are dependent on alcohol and in the long term support of those with alcohol related brain damage (ARBD). Prevention of alcohol related harm has become a major Scottish Government priority and ARBD is an often neglected aspect of this work. Sarah's interests include the use of dementia care strategies in support of ARBD patients, including individuals in research about their care and care needs, innovative approaches to data collection with this group and long term service development.

John Scott CBE FBA, FAcSS is a British sociologist working on issues of economic and political sociology, social stratification, the history of sociology, and social network analysis. He is currently working independently, and has previously worked at the Universities of Strathclyde, Leicester, Essex, and Plymouth. He has published widely, including numerous books, among them Corporations, Classes and Capitalism; The Anatomy of Scottish Capital; The Upper Classes: Property and Privilege in Britain; Networks of Corporate Power; Who Rules Britain?; Poverty and Wealth; Stratification and Power; Corporate Business and Capitalist Classes; Power; A Matter of Record: Documentary Sources in Social Research; Social Network Analysis; Models and Methods in Social Network Analysis; Documentary Research; What is Social Network Analysis?; and Objectivity and Subjectivity in Social Research. He is a Fellow of the British Academy (elected 2007), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (elected 2005), and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (elected 2003). He has been a member of the British Sociological Association since 1970. In 2015 he became Chair of Section S4 of the British Academy.

Mark Tranmer (University of Glasgow) joined the School of Social & Political Sciences in July 2016 as Professor of Quantitative Social Science. From 1999 to June 2016 he was based in Social Statistics in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester, leading the Statistical Modelling Group, as well as being a member of the executive committee of the Mitchell Centre for Social Network Analysis, and a member of the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research (CMIST). He was awarded a PhD in Social Statistics from the University of Southampton in 1999, having previously studied statistics at BSc and MSc level in Sheffield. His methodological research focus began in multilevel modelling, including the development of an approach to combine individual and aggregate data to assess individual and area variations in social, political and health variables. Recently, he has been interested in developing multilevel approaches for assessing the way in which the attributes of a network node (e.g. educational, health, and well-being measures for a person) co-vary with the attributes of other nodes to which they are connected (e.g. through friendship). He has further extended these approaches to assess changes over time in these variations. These methodological developments highlight his general interest in understanding social population structure from a geographical, organisational, network, and temporal perspective.

Notes on discussants

Sarah Doyle (University of Stirling) recently completed an ESRC funded PhD, which focused on tracing the materialization of professional learning as it unfolded in moments of health-care provision for children with diabetes. Sarah’s academic interests are largely related to issues of professional education and knowledge in health and social care, though she has also contributed to studies of critical inquiry in teacher education, and more recently to an ESRC seminar series exploring the participation of software code in broader educational processes, practices and institutions (please see this link for more information: https://codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/coding-as-socio-digital-practice/). With a professional background in mental health nursing, including the provision of training and consultancy, Sarah has taught on the undergraduate medical programme in the University of Edinburgh and currently works in a national role for the special health board NHS Education for Scotland. Sarah appears in one of the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science’s ‘When Methods Meet’ films on the theme of socio-material approaches to research where she is in conversation with Tara Fenwick http://www.socsciscotland.ac.uk/skills_and_training/methods_resources and her publications include ‘Reflexivity and the Capacity to Think’, Qualitative Health Research (2013) Vol.23 (2) 248-255.

Frank Bechhofer is a Research Fellow in the Institute of Governance and Professor Emeritus of Social Research. He started his career as a Research Officer in the Department of Applied Economics at Cambridge University and in 1965 came to Edinburgh as a lecturer in the Department of Sociology. He founded the Research Centre for Social Sciences in 1984 and was its Director until he took early retirement in 1997, in order to concentrate on his research. Since that time his research interests, in collaboration mainly with David McCrone, have been focussed around studies of nationalism, and especially national identity in Scotland and England in the context of constitutional change. Using a variety of research methods the emphasis is on how people 'do' identity, how they construct and sustain their own national identity, accept or reject the identity claims of others, and how these processes relate to constitutional change.

Organised by

The Scottish Graduate School of Social Science is the UK's largest facilitator of funding, training and support for doctoral students in social science. By combining the expertise of sixteen universities across Scotland, the school facilitates world-class PhD research. The school is funded jointly by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Scottish Funding Council.

SGSSS is a highly attractive environment for doctoral research. Not only do our partner universities offer an excellent research environment, we also offer comprehensive and world-class research training in a number of discipline-specific and interdisciplinary pathways. In addition, the school manages a programme of advanced training courses and an annual summer school which together offers our students further opportunities to develop their research, knowledge exchange and transferable professional skills.

At the heart of the SGSSS is the Doctoral Training Partnership (formerly the Doctoral Training Centre) in Scotland. The SGSSS was established in 2011 and is the biggest of 14 Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) accredited DTPs in the United Kingdom. The bid for renewed funding has been successful and from 1 October 2017 the SGSSS will be one of the ESRC's 14 Doctoral Training Partnerships (DTP)

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