Workshops

Morning Workshops

Analyzing Images in Visual Research

Kerry Freedman and Richard Siegesmund

Working with material from Kerry Freedman and Richard Siegesmund’s new research book on visual methods, the workshop introduces applications of visual imagery analysis across a broad range of visual culture. The workshop offers new materialism as an entry way to understanding the application of tacit knowledge when creating, collecting, and analyzing visual materials.  The workshop will consider the ways that visual knowledge can expand research methods in the social sciences.  The visual has become so deeply embedded in culture that all qualitative researchers across disciplines require expertise in visual methods, not just those researchers who seek to pursue arts-based research methodologies.

Keeping in mind the needs of a researcher who has not had an extensive background in visual art, the workshop will offer criteria for the use of visual methods in qualitative inquiry that will help researchers sharpen their analytical skills. Analyzing images requires an understanding of tacit knowledge, new materialism, and the application of visual culture theories, which differ from the standard semiotic approach taken in most visual methods textbooks.  The workshop will focus on the sensory, pre-linguistic embodied empirical evidence in the visual.

Workshop Outcomes:

  • Present analytical strategies that address the form, function, and content of visual images in order to enhance and improve social science methods;
  • Define and apply a new visual benchmarking system (Image as Record, Image as Data, Image as Study, and Image as Theory) that can be used in virtually any research methodology that incorporates visual sources.

Teaching and Learning Qualitative Research Methods Principles Through Popular Film Clips

Johnny Saldaña

This workshop/mini-film festival introduces students and instructors of qualitative research courses pedagogical strategies for using popular film clips to teach and learn principles and methods of inquiry.

Popular film clips can be used to: 1) introduce qualitative research topics; 2) illustrate basic principles and techniques of inquiry; 3) generate classroom discussion and reflection; 4) clarify misunderstood concepts; 5) function as referential mnemonics; and 6) teach selected principles more effectively than traditional classroom pedagogy. Some examples of showcased film scenes and their topics include: The Matrix (ontology, epistemology, methodology, axiology); Miss Evers’ Boys (research ethics); Kinsey (interviewing); Fargo (inductive reasoning); and Experimenter: The Stanley Milgram Story (theory).

Mediated instruction has a longstanding tradition in grades K-12 classrooms, and the power of “edutainment” in our visually-oriented, digital, and performative culture should not be underestimated or dismissed by university professors for their advanced undergraduate and graduate-level classrooms. Popular film viewing offers novelty and engagement in traditional learning settings, and holds the potential to vividly instruct as well as entertain.

This mini-film festival will also include recommendations for related learning activities (e.g., discussion, categorizing, assertion development, thematic analysis); how selected learning strategies can precede and follow popular film clip viewing; and how to access related media and software for teaching resource development.

Writing Qualitative Inquiry: Embracing the Mystery

Christopher Poulos

At the end of Writing the New Ethnography, Dr. H.L. “Bud” Goodall, Jr. (2000) called on researchers to fully “embrace the mystery” of human social research, and to engage “a dialogic ethic and a transformational vision” aimed at “evolving to a higher state of scholarly consciousness” (p. 198).  As a way to enact that vision, this workshop focuses on writing as a primary method of qualitative inquiry (Richardson, 2000). Rather than approaching writing as “writing up” results, we will practice various ways to write our way into and through the richness and mystery of qualitative inquiry from the very beginning of a project.  The emphasis will be on writing as a process for finding your way through the morass of questions, experiences, events, data, and oddities that arise during the research process. Through a series of writing exercises, we will work on: 1) honing the craft of writing qualitative inquiry through vigorous, engaged practice; 2) understanding and attracting readers; 3) searching for relevance, richness, resonance, and reflexivity in your writing; 4) writing ethnographic, autoethnographic, narrative, and other qualitative texts as a means to personal, relational, and social change; and 5) balancing structure and improvisation in the crafting of written texts, performances, and other expressions of research.

Writing Autoethnography and Narrative in Qualitative Research

 Art Bochner and Carolyn Ellis

 This workshop will focus on writing and reading personal narratives about lived experience and on reflexively including researchers’ selves and their interaction with participants in ethnographic projects. Instructors will moderate discussions on perceiving ourselves as story-writers and living a writing life. Topics covered will include: narrative truth; ethics; developing scenes, characters, conversation, and dramatic action; writing vulnerably and evocatively; truth and memory; writing as inquiry; interactive interviews and co-constructed narratives; evaluating and publishing autoethnography. Participants will have an opportunity to write and present (if they wish) a short evocative story and to read and respond to a short, published personal narrative. This workshop is appropriate for those new to autoethnography and narrative inquiry as well as those who have had considerable experience in these approaches to qualitative research.

An Introduction to Social Justice Inquiry using Kathy Charmaz’s Constructivist Grounded Theory

Elaine Keane

This workshop introduces ways to use Kathy Charmaz’s constructivist grounded theory methods to study social justice issues. Grounded theory methods consist of flexible guidelines to fit particular research problems, not to apply mechanically. With these guidelines, you expedite and systematize your data gathering and analysis. These methods and the area of social justice serve mutually complementary purposes. Grounded theory methods can assist social justice researchers in making their work more analytic, precise, and compelling. A social justice focus can help grounded theorists to move their methods into macro analyses. The workshop comprises an overview of GT basic guidelines, major strategies (e.g. coding, theoretical sampling, memoing, and categorising), as well as hands-on exercises. There is an emphasis on constructivist GT’s epistemological foundation and resultant adaptations to the research process, including regarding the literature review, researcher positionality/ies, and participant involvement. You may bring some of your own qualitative data, or if you do not have data yet, some will be supplied.

Elaine Keane is Senior Lecturer (Sociology of Education and Research Methods) and Director of Doctoral Studies in the School of Education, at the National University of Ireland, Galway. As Principal Investigator of numerous externally-funded research projects, her work focuses on widening participation in higher education, diversity in initial teacher education, and constructivist grounded theory. She has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and edited collections. Elaine serves on the Editorial Board of Teaching in Higher Education, and is lead editor on a volume about teacher diversity (Routledge, 2022).  Having attended several workshops with Kathy Charmaz, she used CGT in her own PhD (2009), and subsequently collaborated with Kathy, including as co-author on a chapter for the fifth edition of the Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (2017). She has also collaborated with Robert Thornberg on several CGT publications. Several of her completed and current PhD students have used CGT, and she has served as External Examiner for grounded theory-based PhD theses. Since 2013, Elaine has given invited addresses and workshops on CGT in universities in Ireland, England, Sweden, and the USA (ICQI, 2015, 2019, 2021).

What do you do with a grounded theory? Testing Theory Qualitatively

Jane F. Gilgun

Since its inception in 1967, the principles of grounded theory have guided researchers to enter the field with an open mind in order to identify processes, concepts, and theories that are specific to the research situation. Much has been written about how to do this, why, and with what epistemological and ontological assumptions. Largely left unaddressed is, What do you do with a grounded theory? How do you follow up with further research? Glaser and Strauss and subsequent developers of grounded theory, such as Charmaz, have taken little notice of these questions, although the under-developed notion of formal theory is a kind of theory-testing endeavor.

In this workshop, I show how to test theory qualitatively. The sources of the theory to be tested can from many sources including but not limited to previous grounded theory studies, hypotheses developed from a literature review, serendipitous observations, and hunches arising from personal and professional experiences. Researchers use concepts, theories, and conceptual frameworks to guide analysis from the onset, and they test this material on a wide variety of cases. They engage in cross-case and within-case comparisons, and the seek variations and exceptions within the categories that they identify.

This is a deductive approach, and in order to avoid imposing theory on data that Glaser and Strauss (1967) saw as bad scholarship, deductive qualitative analysis guides researchers to deliberately seek data that show promise of challenging, modifying, and undermining emerging findings and the original framework itself. Indeed, researchers often do deductive qualitative research to refute and reformulate theory.

This approach helps students and more seasoned scholars to figure out how to include literature reviews in their proposals for dissertations and for funding.

Grounded theory and deductive approaches have common roots within the Chicago School of Sociology. Not only did Glaser and Strauss dismiss deduction as an initial step in qualitative research, many other researchers did as well. Thus, qualitative theory testing fell out of favor.

I will illustrate the procedures of qualitative theory-testing with examples and will reserve time for research participates to test a theory on a small bit of data they have with them or with data that I provide.

Finally, in this workshop, I will illustrate Cronbach’s now ancient insight that every finding, no matter how derived, is a working hypothesis when applied to new settings.  The results of grounded theory research, like findings from all other studies, are further developed when they are tested on new samples.

References

 

Almutairi, A. F., Gardner, G.E., & McCarthy, A. (2014). Practical guidance for the use of a pattern-matching technique in case-study research: A case presentation. Nursing and Health Science, 16, 239-244. https://doi.org/10.1111/nhs.12096

Casula, M, Rangarajan, N. & Shields, P. (2020). The potential of working hypotheses for deductive exploratory research. Quality & Quantity. https://doi-org.ezp2.lib.umn.edu/10.1007/s11135-020-01072-9

Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory (2nd ed.). London: Sage.

Cronbach, L. J. (1975). Beyond the two disciplines of scientific psychology. American Psychologist, 30, 116-127.

Gilgun, J. F. (2019). Deductive qualitative analysis and grounded theory: Sensitizing concepts and hypothesis testing. In Bryant, A. & Charmaz, K. (Eds.), The Sage handbook of grounded theory (2nd ed.) (pp. 107-122). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Gilgun, J. F. (in press). Designing qualitative social work research. In U. Flick (Ed), Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research Design. London: Sage.

Gilgun, J.F. (in press). The myth of redemptive interpersonal violence: Implications for theory development. Journal of Qualitative Sociology. DOI: 10.1037/qup0000212

Glaser, B. & Strauss, A. (l967). The discovery of grounded theory. Chicago: Aldine.

Glaser, B. G. & Strauss, A. L. (1971). Status passage. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction.

Mikles, S. P., Hyewon, S. Kientz, J. A., & Turner, A.M. (2018). The use of model constructs to design collaborative health information technologies: A case study to support child development, Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 86, 167-174. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2018.09.003

Moving from page and stage, to digital possibilities: 

Kitrina Douglas & David Carless

Fear is a creeping death, that threatens everything that’s dear (Carless, 2016)

Qualitative researchers have a long history of using powerful writing and performative methodologies to social justice aims. During the covid pandemic many of us were thrust (unprepared) into the digital world which at times, seemed to create fear and suspicion. While there are many fears associated with digital representations the opportunity to share research and challenge stigma, discrimination, give a voice and face to silenced individuals are reasons to explore further how we might harness its potential in our field (Douglas & Carless, 2020, 2019). In this workshop we support delegates to draw on embodied practices (such as poetic representations, stories, music, and songs) to create digital outputs. The workshop has three phases: Phase one – harnessing the creative spark; Phase two – amplifying and digitising bodies, images and audio; Phase three – realising the digital potential of your research for sharing beyond the page and stage. We provide insights into different types of approaches and as exemplars and take delegates behind the scenes in the making of:

“21st Century mothers: Making life work” Research with mother in areas of highest health inequalities in the UK where an actor narrates a first person narrative of one mum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKJYUxpWbAE&t=5s

“The Blue Funnel Line” Research into homelessness and inner city council housing through the life story of one merchant seaman from Liverpool as a song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cftAy_SaurY

“Throat Bone” by Elyse Pineau, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoStNvJ38Z8&t=335s,

Where images supported creative writing of the autoethnographer through collaboration.

The workshop will also explore some of ethical and technical challenges of this work, shedding light on some practical steps forward. The workshop will appeal to those who wish to make research more accessible and understandable to a wider audience.

Notes for delegates: Please bring:

Something you would like to develop, this can be just a simple idea through to findings of research. A digital device of some kind, smartphone, iphone, recorder, dictaphone

References

Douglas, K., & Carless, C. (2020). The Long Run: A Story About Filmmaking as Qualitative Research. Qualitative Inquiry. 26, (3-4)281-290

Douglas, K., Carless, D., Milnes, K., Turner-Moore, T., Tan, J. & Laredo, E. (2019). Autoethnographies and new technologies of representation: An example from facilitating conversations on sexual topics in education, Qualitative Inquiry, Vol. 25(6) 535–538

Getting Successfully Published

Deborah Laughton & Karen M. Staller

Finding the best “home” for your qualitative research article or book idea does not have to be a crap shoot.  You do have the power to pick, and this workshop will arm you with the knowledge to increase your hit rate and pick the best publisher for your work.  Taught by a thirty+ year publisher of award-winning qualitative books, C. Deborah Laughton, and a leading, nineteen-year qualitative journal editor, Karen Staller, you will learn:

  • How to find and select the publisher that’s the best fit for your work
  • How to mine your research study, dissertation, or teaching experiences for journal articles or book ideas
  • All the mechanics of submitting your work, including how to avoid common pitfalls in journal and book manuscript submissions
  • How to contact a journal or book editor
  • How to write a query letter
  • How the editorial process works
  • How contracts and royalties work
  • How publishers market and promote their books

Using instruction, brief exercises, and group discussion, this workshop will help you develop materials that will pique a publisher’s or editor’s interest.   By the end of this workshop, you will have strategies for getting to know journals, editors and other authors, establishing relationships with them, and for crafting a journal article or book proposal that gets read.

Afternoon Workshops

Doing Situational Analysis

Rachel Washburn and Adele Clarke

Situational analysis is an extension of grounded theory for analyzing qualitative data including interview, ethnographic, historical, visual, and/or other discursive materials. It is especially useful for multi-site research, feminist and critical inquiry. Emphasis is on grasping often messy complexities in the data and understanding relations among the elements constitutive of the situation.

There are four main mapping approaches:

  1. Situational maps lay out the major human, nonhuman, discursive and other elements in the research situation and provoke analysis of relations among them;
  2. Relational maps push analysts to specify relations among the different elements;
  3. Social worlds/arenas maps lay out the collective actors and the arena(s) of commitment and discourse within which they are engaged in ongoing negotiations—interpretations of the collective social situation; and
  4. Positional maps lay out the major positions taken and not taken in the discursive data vis-à-vis particular axes of difference, concern, and controversy around issues in the situation of inquiry.

Through mapping, the analyst constructs the situation of inquiry empirically. The situation per se becomes the ultimate unit of analysis. The maps themselves offer coherent means of representing the analysis useful for presentations and publications. The maps can be reconstructed over time to specify emergent elements in the research situation about which data have been and/or still need to be gathered. The maps thus intentionally work against the usual simplifications so characteristic of research.

This workshop will provide an introduction to situational analysis and the major mapping strategies noted above. We will place particular emphasis on developing situational maps. These can be used for initial project design and later revised in a flexible and iteratively responsive manner across the duration of the project. Participants are encouraged (but not required) to come to the workshop with a draft map and be prepared to discuss it in the group. The workshop goal is to help participants get a strong analytic grip on the situation they are studying.

For more information on SA, see:

Clarke, Adele E., Carrie Friese, and Rachel Washburn, eds. Forthcoming 2021. Situational Analysis in Practice: Mapping Research with Grounded Theory, Second Edition. London: Routledge.

Clarke, Adele E., Carrie Friese, and Rachel Washburn. 2018. Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory After the Interpretive Turn, Second Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Clarke, Adele E., in conversation with R. Keller. 2014. Engaging Complexities: Working Against Simplification as an Agenda for Qualitative Research Today. FQS Forum: Qualitative Social Research 15(2). Online: http://www.qualitative-research.net/ index.php/fqs/article/view/2186/3667.

http://study.sagepub.com/clarke2e

Contextualizing Netnography

Robert Kozinets and Ulrike Gretzel

This workshop is dedicated to providing participants with frameworks and tools allowing them to understand and adapt netnography to the range of complex and changing circumstances that face the contemporary qualitative researcher. Netnography assembles the methods of ethnography and other qualitative research practices and applies them to the investigation of techno-social experiences encompassed by, and reflected within, the traces, networks, and platforms of social media. Netnography differs from general modes of digital inquiry by its emphasis on contextualized understanding, and it differs from other forms of online or digital ethnography because it provides specific, toolbox-level, procedural guidelines. These guidelines have been constructed to provide qualitative researchers across multiple fields with a methodological approach that is consistent, rigorous, clear, ethical, and adaptable. Netnography can be applied to a range of social media platforms, large and small, public and private, from community forums to Pinterest boards to Snapchat exchanges. In response to dynamic changes in socio-technical realities, netnography evolves and netnographers must adapt.

Some of the changing circumstances requiring methodological adaptation, which we will discuss in this workshop, include:

  • Multi-person researcher collaborations in netnography;
  • Multi-platform studies;
  • Studies of (audio)visual media;
  • Working within private and closed social networks;
  • Navigating GDPR and data ethics issues;
  • Utilizing data from mobile communications;
  • The impact and opportunities of algorithms;
  • Researcher engagement vs. participation.

Composing Bodies: Performative Autoethnography as Qualitative Research

Tami Spry

“Experiencing language as a transformative force was not an awareness that I arrived at through writing. I discovered it through performance.”

– bell hooks, Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work

Why performative autoethnography? How will performance methods ground and expand my research? This interactive workshop introduces performative autoethnography, a method assisting in articulating our embodied relations with others in culture.  We will cover:

  • How performance methods assist in the composition of performative autoethnographic and other qualitative research methods.
  • How to access and articulate bodily knowledge as part of a larger experiential research assemblage.
  • How to critically reflect upon and articulate one’s experiences with others in contexts.
  • How to activate awareness of the body’s involvement with and relationship to others, culture, and other materialities.
  • How the composition and performance process continually forms and reforms the body, the body of the text, the text of the body, and ultimately offers a deep and intimate understanding of self/other/culture which are part of agentic material assemblages.

One need not have performance experience or have any intention of performing to benefit from performative autoethnography as a methodology of research and knowledge construction.

Songwriting as an Arts-Based Research Methodology

J. Chris Haddox

The literature on the use of songwriting as a research method is limited.  I have found it to be a powerful tool for engaging stakeholders in dialogue about their communities—past, present, and future.  I use songwriting to give voice to the unheard, visibility to the unseen, and to spur the uninspired to action.  My published community development work has focused on breaking down the songwriting process into manageable phases, and engaging stakeholders—from eight year olds to octogenarians—in the creation of songs about the Appalachian places they call home.   The resulting data-filled songs tell community stories the way the community wants them told. They are performable pieces that can be used to reach into the soul in ways that other data cannot.  This 3- hour workshop will expand upon my past ICQI presentations on the topic.  Participants will learn use this process to create their own songs about their home places and the issues confronting those places.  They will learn how to engage others in the creation of songs that address the rights, the wrongs, and the ways forward to more just places of existence.

Centering Qualitatively-Driven Approaches to Mixed Methods Research Inquiry

Sharlene Hesse-Biber

A lack of understanding characterizes the contemporary formalized practice of mixed methods research inquiry. There remains a de-valuing of the critical contributions qualitatively-driven approaches to mixed methods research can offer in the service of tackling complex research problems. Instead, the current praxis of mixed methods privileges a positivist quantitatively-driven mixed methods inquiry. The qualitative research component takes on a “second best” role whose goal is to embellish the findings or complete the quantitative component’s results.

This workshop is for those qualitative researchers who would like to learn more about qualitatively-driven mixed methods inquiry and how to extend their qualitative understanding of complex social problems and issues by incorporating a qualitatively-driven mixed methods research design into their own work. A prior knowledge of mixed methods research inquiry is not necessary.

Workshop Objectives:  Our overall objective is to take you through the “nuts and bolts” of conducting a qualitatively-driven mixed methods research inquiry. We provide a “hands-on” approach to learning that gives you a set of specific mixed methods exercises that will walk you through the process of interrogating a range of published qualitatively-driven mixed methods case studies that will allow you to examine the in-depth process by which this type of research design is implemented across the research process. The following are some of the main things this workshop will cover:

  • We define and provide specific examples of what is meant by a qualitatively-driven mixed methods research approach. We discuss some of the most important reasons a qualitatively-driven researcher might seek to include a quantitative component into their primarily qualitatively-driven research study. We will briefly discuss a specific type of multimethod research design that utilizes two different qualitative methods and is often considered as a type of qualitatively-driven mixed methods research design.
  • We examine and provide examples of what is meant by a “mixed methods research problem” and its role in selecting a study’s research design. We show how the selection of a qualitatively-driven mixed methods research design is an ongoing and iterative process such that a given project’s research question may change or evolve overtime, and in turn, its research design may also need to be adjusted as well.

We also note that mixed methods research inquiry involves asking different questions that often stem from divergent paradigmatic viewpoints. We, therefore, address issues of paradigm incompatibility and strategies for managing epistemic chasms when conducting a mixed methods research project.

  • We introduce and describe some of the most frequently used qualitatively-driven mixed methods research designs and some of the primary reasons this type of design is chosen by qualitative researchers. For each qualitatively-driven mixed methods research design selected, we examine the connections between the qualitative and quantitative components of the design and reveal how they come together at the data collection, data analysis, and interpretation stages.
  • Small group exercise: We will showcase some empirical case studies that utilize a range of qualitatively-driven mixed methods research designs. Participants, working in small groups, will be assigned a specific case study to analyze and critique. We ask participants to diagrammatically trace step-by-step how their assigned case study’s qualitatively-driven research design is formulated and carried out across the research process. Participants will assess the extent to which their case study’s qualitatively-driven research design meets the stated objectives as noted in their case study, as well as evaluating the project’s overall strengths and weaknesses.
  • We will discuss the “Takeaway Points” emerging from the step by step analysis conducted by each group. Participants will be asked to address some guiding questions based on their group analysis such as: To what extent, if any, did their case study analysis illustrate the power and breadth of harnessing qualitatively-driven mixed methods research designs in the service of understanding complex research problems? If not, Why? To what extent did their case study analysis reveal how the deployment of a quantitative method is strategically applied within a dominant qualitatively-driven methodology? Did the incorporation of a quantitative component add value to the qualitative results of the study? If not, why?
  • In addition, we will discuss some of the logistical issues participants may need to consider when embarking on a qualitatively-driven mixed methods project. The first is dealing with the financial costs they might incur in carrying out this type of research design. In addition, how will participants address the potential skills-gap and theoretical-gap issues they may encounter when seeking to conduct a mixed methods research project? We will discuss some strategies for addressing each of these logistical issues.
  • We will end the workshop with a “brainstorm” session that asks participants to envision and reflect how they might deploy a qualitatively-driven mixed methods research design in their current or future research projects. What do they perceive as some of the barriers to implementing this type of research design in their own work?  What are some facilitators that might motivate them to pursue this type of research design?

Some scholarly references you might want to check out:

Hesse-Biber, S.N, (2010). Mixed methods research: Merging theory with practice. New York: Guilford Press.

Hesse-Biber, S. N. (2010). Qualitative approaches to mixed methods practice. Qualitative Inquiry, 16(6), 455–468.

Hesse-Biber, S. & Johnson, R.B. (2015). The Oxford handbook of multimethod and mixed methods research inquiry. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Hesse-Biber, S. (2018). Toward an understanding of a qualitatively-driven mixed methods data collection and analysis: moving toward a theoretically centered mixed methods praxis. In Uwe Flick (Ed), The Sage handbook of qualitative data collection. (pp. 545-563). London UK: SAGE

Morse, J.M. & Cheek, J. (2014) Making room for qualitatively-driven mixed-methods research. Qualitative Health Research Vol. 24(1): 3-5.

Cultivating and nurturing a researcher self: The inside and outside of knowledge

Liora Bresler

Research projects are expansive endeavors. They live a life of their own, calling for a wide range of skills and “habits of mind/heart” that engage and challenge our intellectual, relational and emotional powers. This workshop will center on key issues involved in doing research, including (i) relating to our research, balancing academic goals and values with inner compasses; (ii) connecting intensified, open-ended field-work with existing and emerging conceptualizations and theories; and (iii) combining the rhythm and mode of lingering in prolonged engagement and reflection, with attention to brisk time-lines and cultures of productivity.

The workshop, held at the Krannert Art Museum, will include exercises inviting participants to engage in inner dialogue with their (current, anticipated or past) research project as well as “conversation” with a work of art.

Meeting at the main entrance of Krannert Art Museum on Peabody and 6th street at 12:20 (easy walking distance from the Illini Union).

Performative Writing Workshop

Ronald J. Pelias

The workshop is designed to help participants think through what constitutes performative writing and to apply that thinking to their own work. The workshop will address how texts can perform on the page, how performative writing stands in relationship to other qualitative methods, how particular writing strategies can be deployed to make a text perform, how to manage ethical concerns that emerge in performative writing, and how experience, rendered evocatively, functions as evidence. The participants will have an opportunity to engage in performative writing through a series of planned exercises that will demonstrate the power of performative writing techniques. The workshop is open to all who have an interest in performative writing as a method.

Reckoning with Race & Justice through Performance

Durell Callier & Dominique C. Hill

This workshop engages participants in the practices of witnessing and performing racialized narratives. Participants will be guided through a three part process that culminates in sharing performances. With an emphasis on crafting performances that reflect interconnected and geospecific histories of race, contemporary struggles, and possibilities, we will spend our time together: i.) (re)membering racialized happenings, ii.) identifying cultural and personal significance, and iii.)  crafting and staging narratives that envision social change. Resultant performances will allow us to collectively sense and embody our unique historical sociocultural contexts of race as well as witness and imagine differently racial injustice. Collaboratively, we will interrogate the saliency of race, the persistence of racial domination in its various iterations, and how performance offers an intervention to illuminate and transcend these realities. This workshop is for those interested in learning about the inner workings of collaboration, how to feel for and embody research, as well as produce performances, which create avenues to right racial injustices.

Centering Disability in Qualitative Research Design

Jessica Nina Lester, Emily Nusbaum, & Holly Pearson 

In this interactive workshop, we focus on how researchers might center disability and disability embodiment when conducting critical qualitative research. This workshop is not focused on research about or on disability, but rather argues that disabled bodyminds and disabled embodiment advance all forms of qualitative inquiry. To begin, we overview the potential and existing linkages between critical qualitative inquiry and critical disability studies. Then, to make the practice of centering disability visible, we provide examples of scholarship that think with and center bodyminds otherwise rendered unthinkable and unlivable. Following this, we introduce a framework for designing and carrying out a critical qualitative study that centers disability and its intersections as sources of methodological and data collection advancement. Participants are encouraged to bring an idea for a current or future critical qualitative inquiry project to think with and through disability.