By Louise Ridden | When I started my collaborative ESRC funded PhD in September 2019, I imagined I’d spend many months traveling for my fieldwork. My research topic looks at nonviolent responses to armed conflict, and civilians protecting themselves and…
Could ethnographic methods offer more than interviews when researching curriculum enactment in Wales?
By Rhianna Murphy | Recently I have been reviewing literature for my PhD study on national curriculum enactment in Wales. Whilst there are different methodologies and methods being used amongst studies, there are many research projects that take a case-study…
You Got Your PhD With THAT? (Part I)
By Claire Förster | ‘I know what I want to say, but I just can’t write it down!’ – Look like a familiar trope? Unless you are of the rare breed of (novice) researchers, who just happens to be an…
You Got Your PhD With THAT? (Part II)
By Claire Förster | Oh, hello, there! You look like I know you from Part I of this post? If not (a) your face is awfully familiar to someone else and (b) you might want to go there. It would…
Using Performance in Research
By Aled Mark Singleton | This blog article outlines the use of performance – namely public walks and small dramatic interventions – as part of research methodology and practice. This article is supported with links to a short video made…
XML mark-up: an annotation tool for discourse analysis
By Katharine Kavanagh | Working recently on a critical discourse analysis project that required annotation of sentencing remarks from UK judges, our team were introduced to the practice of XML mark-up. Manual XML coding was used as a way of recording…
In Defence of Pragmatism: Less a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ and more a ‘Community Chest’
By Alexander Jones | For myself, undertaking a ‘Research Methods’ MSc was my earliest introduction to the ontologies and epistemologies we hold as individuals and researchers. It can be intriguing and exciting learning about the intrinsic views we hold regarding…
The Challenges of Conducting School-Based Research
By Amy Simpson | Prior to being awarded an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Wales Doctoral Training Centre (DTC) Studentship, I worked as a Research Administrator at the Centre for the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public…
Including the temporal elements of experiences
By Laura Shobiye | Capturing the temporal elements of individuals’ experiences – that’s something I am setting out to do. I really hope I can achieve it! I am a first year PhD student and this blog post piece is…
Measuring social class: is a multi-dimensional approach needed?
By Ross Goldstone | A good place to start this would be through posing a question: If an upper-class individual (defined economically) loses their job, do they then cease to be upper-class and become working-class or a member of the…
Freedom of Information Requests as a Tool for Social Science Research
By Jennie Mack | Following the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulations earlier this year, we are now more aware than ever of the proliferation of information produced through every day interactions, the nature of its storage and our…