Past events
We regularly organise methods-related events and our archive is a great way to see which topics have been covered previously.
Browse through our past events by academic year:
Considering Collaboration: Lessons from the ‘Pathways to Work for Muslim Women’ project
With Dr Asma Khan (Cardiff University)
Thursday, 13 June 2024, 2-4pm
This online Methods North West seminar aimed to explore the presenter’s experiences of working collaboratively with third-sector organisations to create impact from academic research projects. Dr Asma Khan focused on a project in which she co-designed a workshop programme to encourage and motivate those Muslim women who want to join, or re-join, the labour market. The session will include reflections on the benefits and challenges of co-production in ways that will benefit other researchers who are thinking ahead to developing collaborative impact and engagement activities with third-sector organisations.
Using MAXQDA for Qualitative Analysis
With Dr Marianna Rolbina
Friday, 17 May 2024
This masterclass was ran in collaboration with the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIOIR).
Researching Multilingually and Translation as Method
With Dr Anna Strowe, Dr Rebecca Tipton, Dr Leonie Gaiser, and Dr Richard Fay
Thursday, 9 May 2024
This masterclass was ran in collaboration with the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies & Manchester Institute of Education.
Creative Academic Writing with Helen Kara - A Taster
With Dr Helen Kara
Thursday, 2 May 2024, 2-4pm
This online Methods North West seminar demonstrated that there is great scope for creativity in academic writing across all disciplines. It highlighted some of the options and gave attendees a chance to try a couple of them for themselves. The aim was to prove that writing creatively is more fun for the writer and produces more engaging text for the reader.
The ‘researched’ as bearers of knowledge: breaking the barriers of colonial practices in ethnography
With Leah Koumentaki (Keele University)
Thursday, 18 April 2024, 2-4pm
This online Methods North West seminar aims to illustrate how the cultural temperament of the locals and the cultural norms within the research area positively affect the shaping of data collection methods and research approaches. It is concluded that in a local cultural context such as Mountain Crete, ‘living ethnography’ instead of simply ‘doing ethnography’ was a culturally appropriate approach for conducting ethical research and collecting raw evidence for understanding the local population and the reasons why they prefer their customary systems to justice with how they employ a restorative way of correcting a wrong.
Mixed methods and creative approaches for migration research
With Abril Rios Rivera
Thursday, 4 April 2024, 2-4pm
Mixed methods that integrate participatory and creative techniques have a tremendous potential to help create spaces where research collaborators have control over their stories and research outcomes. Nevertheless, they also have huge ethical and cost implications. This seminar presented the methodological approach used to explore processes of decision making and empowerment among women and gender-diverse survival migrants in three Mexican cities. This research methodology used photovoice, surveys, life-story interviews, and sustained social media contact with research collaborators. Participants were approached by engaging with 10 civil society organisations which involved complex power dynamics that were discussed in the seminar.
Researching Diverse Economies
With Peter North (University of Liverpool)
Thursday, 21 March 2024, 2-4pm
This session explored the diverse economies approach developed by geographers JK Gibson-Graham and the Community Economies Institute. It examined non-capitalocentric and reparative epistemologies, how to read for difference and hopefulness rather than domination and closure, and an engagement with some of the research undertaken in this spirit before a discussion of how participants might use these approaches in their own research.
Ethnographic and interpretive approaches to street-level bureaucracy
With Mike Rowe (University of Liverpool)
Thursday, 14 March 2024, 2-4pm
We see public policy the wrong way up. At least, that is the perspective developed in Michael Lipsky’s (1980) idea of street-level bureaucracy. Instead of puzzling at repeated public policy implementation failures and wondering why street-level bureaucrats don’t behave the way policy-makers expect, we need to understand the world as seen from the ground. Every effort to alter the way those street-level bureaucrats act affects the ways they respond to dilemmas and throws up further sets of questions and uncertainties. This session explored what this understanding means for research. Fundamentally, it demands we adopt an interpretive and ethnographic approach.
A single scene: Using smartphone cameras in ethnographic research
With Dr Angela Torresan
Thursday, 15 February 2024, 2-5pm
This masterclass was ran in collaboration with the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology and EASA Visual Anthropology Network and features
Empowering change: Harnessing qualitative data for impactful project evaluation for impactful charitable work
With Dr Amir Raki, Dr Ilma Chowdhury and Prof Judy Zolkiewski
Friday, 2 February 2024, 2-4pm
This masterclass was ran in collaboration with the Greater Manchester Third Sector Research Network
Ethnographic and interpretive approaches to street-level bureaucracy
With Prof. Helen Beckett (University of Central Lancashire)
Thursday, 1 Feburary 2024, 2-4pm
This session shared the trauma-informed approach to research that the presenter and her colleagues have developed over 15 years of engaging children and young people in research about sexual abuse. It outlined the key principles of trauma-informed practice, exploring what this means within a research environment. The session included practical examples of the ways in which trauma-informed principles can be designed into your research plans, from minor tweaks to consent processes to responding to participant distress.
Oral histories and futures
With Dr Liz Ackerley, Dr Santiago Levya del Rio & Dr Laura Fenton
This masterclass is being run in collaboration with The Morgan Centre
Tuesday, 12 December 2023, 2-4pm
Co-producing urban research: Sharing methods and experiences
A collaboration between the Manchester Urban Institute and the Global Development Institute
Panel discussion:
- Diana Mitlin (Chair), Global Development Institute, University of Manchester
- Victoria Beard, Cornell Mui Ho Center for Cities
- Tine Buffel, Manchester Urban Ageing Research Group, University of Manchester
- James Evans, Manchester Urban Institute, University of Manchester
- Shuaib Lwasa, International Institute for Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Wednesday, 6 December 2023, 1.30-2.30pm
How to design and run a citizens’ jury
With Dr. Malcolm Oswald
Thursday, 30 November 2023, 2-4pm
Citizens’ juries are a form of deliberative democracy, designed to enable an informed cross-section of the public to contribute to public policymaking. During this presentation, Malcolm addressed the following questions:
• What is a citizens’ jury?
• Why run citizens’ juries?
• How can a citizens’ jury be designed and run?
• What are the main critiques of citizens’ juries?
• Are they an appropriate method for research?
- Methods Masterclass: 'Ethics in Times of Adversity' with Dr Helen Kara
- Methods Masterclass: 'Latent Growth Models and Latent Growth Mixture Models' with Prof Roberta Fida
- Methods Masterclass: 'Researcher vulnerability workshop' with Dr Chloe Steadman (Manchester Metropolitan University)
- Methods Fair 2023
- Summer School 2023
- Data analytics in equality, diversity and inclusion in higher education - 12th January 2022
- Creative fieldwork online - 20th January 2022
- Working with collage as a research method: insights into theory and practice 17th February 2022
- Data visualisation with R - 21st - 22nd February 2022
- Adapting cultural probes for use online - 8th March 2022
- Introduction to statistical computing with R and RStudio - 16th March 2022
- Doing sensory methods: sensations and everyday elicitations - 27th April 2022
- Designing accessible visualisation for people with intellectual and developmental dissabilities - 28th April 2022
- Introduction to time-series forecasting with R - 5th May 2022 [POSTPONED]
- Reflective bookmaking - 9th May 2022
- Fiction and social research - 12th May 2022
- The use of civic hackathons as co-learning spaces for peer research - 26th May 2022 [POSTPONED]
- Enhanced interviewing - 14th June 2022
- Web scraping with R - 15th June 2022
- Methods Fair 2020 - 30th November 2020
- Documents as Data - 2nd June 2021
- Summer School 2021 21st June - 5th July 2021
- Methods Fair: Creativity in Social Science Research – 29th October 2019
- Socio-Legal Research Methods - 11th December 2019
- Ethical Thinking and Decision-Makin in Practice - 21st January 2020
- Seminar: How to do Topic Modelling using R - 27th January 2020
- Craftin and Writing Autoethnography - 13th March 2020 (Cancelled)
- Learning through Playful Methods - 7th September 2020