2.00 - 3.30

Session 1 - Overview

Chair: Maria Hudson, Policy Studies Institute

Delivering Quality: the Promises and Problems of Qualitative Research

Harriet Bradley, University of Bristol

Britain has a long history of excellence in qualitative social research, but

in the era of 'evidence-based research' the tradition faces new challenges.

This presentation will present an overview of some of the exciting and

innovative trends in the field, but also address some of the problems researchers must

grapple with in a more regulated and competitive academic and political

environment.

The Production of Difference in Qualitative Research

Yasmin Gunaratnam, University of Central Lancashire

 Drawing upon feminist and postcolonial theories the presentation will look at how difference is produced and given meaning in qualitative research. With a focus upon ethnicity it will use examples of research with dying people from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds to explore questions of commonality and difference, ethics and complicity.

4.00 - 5.30

Session 2 - Research in action:

Chair: Jane Nolan, University of Cambridge

Talking to Boys

Linda McDowell, University of Oxford

This session will look at some of the questions about difference that arose in a project that involved interviewing white working class boys in Sheffield and Cambridge several times during the course of the year in which the finished compulsory secondary education and began to look for work. Issues about class, gender, accent, age and place influenced the nature of the interactions between us.

Using discourse analysis to compare women managers identities in Britain and Singapore

Reena Bhavani, Middlesex University

The analysis of discourse is "not concerned with hidden meanings, but to understand how they have appeared - what it means that they have appeared." (Foucault 1971).

The purpose of the paper is primarily to discuss why analysing discourses of managerial women and their identities can reveal a deeper understanding of historical structural and cultural constraints on women's agency in Singapore and Britain.

A full paper is downloadable here

The role of the researcher in sensitive qualitative research: A Study of   Ethnicity and Occupational Stress

Grace Miller Loughborough University

Researchers often outline the processes that go right and omit those that do not; or perhaps neglect to record the details of any unexpected outcomes. The production of reflexive accounts is useful to new and future researchers when enquiring into the realisms of minority ethnic groups. It is important that we as researchers document the experiences of conducting qualitative enquiries and this paper will address that issuse with reference to minority ethnic ‘teachers’.