Helen Lomax | The University of Huddersfield (original) (raw)
Papers by Helen Lomax
Fields: journal of Huddersfield student research, 2021
This issue includes contributions from across the University's academic schools, reflecting the r... more This issue includes contributions from across the University's academic schools, reflecting the range and quality of research undertaken in the arts and humanities, the social sciences, education, business, science, health, technology and engineering. Each paper builds on research and scholarship in the author's field in order to
Sociological Research Online
This inaugural special issue of ‘Beyond the Text’ brings together a collection of visual arts (an... more This inaugural special issue of ‘Beyond the Text’ brings together a collection of visual arts (animation, creative and fine art, film, photographs, and zines) produced by children, young people, families, artists, and academics as part of co-created research during the 2020–2021 coronavirus pandemic. Our aim, in making these pieces available in this new publication format, is to illustrate the potential of visual arts as a form of co-creation and knowledge exchange which can transcend the challenges of researching ‘at a distance’, enable participants and co-researchers to share their stories, and support different ways of knowing for academic, policy, and public audiences. This is not to suggest that such methods offer transparent windows into participants’ worlds. As the reflections from the contributing authors consider, visual arts outputs leave room for audience interpretations, making them vulnerable to alternative readings, generating challenges and opportunities about how muc...
Sociological Research Online , 2022
'Our Voices' is an animation co-created with children aged 9-11 during the 2020-2021 global pande... more 'Our Voices' is an animation co-created with children aged 9-11 during the 2020-2021 global pandemic. A short, stop-start animation of children's visual, audio and textual representations of their experiences offers a visceral account of the pandemic in England from their perspectives. In making available the animation in this inaugural issue of 'Beyond the Text', we have two key aims. The first is to enable children, who have been barely seen and little heard during the pandemic, to voice their experiences in accordance with their aspirations. The second is to reflect upon the process of transforming creative data made by and with children into an animation that is representative of children's diverse experiences and acknowledges their contributions in ways which enable audiences to engage through 'seeing'. Accordingly, our accompanying text explores how, through a feminist ethics of care, we sought to co-produce an animation with children which delivers key messages from them and acknowledges their role as co-researchers while maintaining their anonymity. In describing our methodological and ethical practices, we aspire to make visible the relational, dialogic processes inherent in co-production, offering viewers a way of seeing the complexity of children's experiences through the multi-layered affordances of participatory animation.
Editorial - Special Inaugural issue of ‘Beyond the Text’ Sociological Research Online, 27 (3)., 2022
This inaugural special issue of 'Beyond the Text' brings together a collection of visual arts (an... more This inaugural special issue of 'Beyond the Text' brings together a collection of visual arts (animation, creative and fine art, film, photographs, and zines) produced by children, young people, families, artists, and academics as part of co-created research during the 2020-2021 coronavirus pandemic. Our aim, in making these pieces available in this new publication format, is to illustrate the potential of visual arts as a form of co-creation and knowledge exchange which can transcend the challenges of researching 'at a distance', enable participants and co-researchers to share their stories, and support different ways of knowing for academic, policy, and public audiences. This is not to suggest that such methods offer transparent windows into participants' worlds. As the reflections from the contributing authors consider, visual arts outputs leave room for audience interpretations, making them vulnerable to alternative readings, generating challenges and opportunities about how much it is possible to know about another and what is ethical to share. It is to these issues of ethics, representation, and voice that this special issue attends, reflecting on the possibilities of arts-based approaches for knowledge generation and exchange in and beyond the coronavirus pandemic.
This report details the application of the Participatory Design Model (IO2), in each of the CyGen... more This report details the application of the Participatory Design Model (IO2), in each of the CyGen partner countries: the UK, Denmark, Belgium and Greece, with emphasis on the workshop elements of data collection. First, we offer an overview of the Design Cycle to contextualise our reflections, including our analytical approach and the key ethical considerations which underpinned the project. Intellectual Outputs (IO3: Design Workshops), describes the work completed in each of our partner schools, applying the methodological framework and DesignKit presented in IO2, and building on the needs analysis completed during IO1: Scoping and Needs Analysis, to produce the educational resources reported in IO3: Co-Designed Digital Education Package. This report captures the team’s reflections on the following tasks, completed in fulfilment of IO3
Handbook of Research Ethics and Scientific Integrity, 2019
SAGE Research Methods Foundations, 2020
Ethnography 1. "treats people as knowledgeable, situated agents from whom researchers can learn a... more Ethnography 1. "treats people as knowledgeable, situated agents from whom researchers can learn a great deal about how the world is seen, lived and works" 2. "it is an extended, detailed, 'immersive', inductive methodology" 3. "it can involve a 'shamelessly eclectic' and 'methodologically opportunist' combination of research methods but, at its core, there must be an extended period of 'participant observation' research (Jackson, 1985: 169)." 4. "participant observation uniquely involves studying both what people say they do and why, and what they are seen to do and say to others about this." 5. it "inevitably involves tricky negotiations between researchers' words and deeds" 6 ." its main research tool is the researcher and the ways in which he or she is used to acting in more familiar circumstances and learns to act in the often strange and strained circumstances of his or her research settings."
Intergenerational Space, 2015
This chapter draws on insights from visual sociology and human geography to consider the ethnogra... more This chapter draws on insights from visual sociology and human geography to consider the ethnographic encounter as a space of intergenerational exchange. Building on theoretical developments in children’s geography and sociology (Fox Gotham 2003; Hendrick 2003; Valentine 2008; Vanderbeck and Dunkley 2004) and methodological insights from visual sociology and discursive psychology (Luttrell 2010; Taylor 2010; Wetherell 1998) the chapter considers the ways in which the ethnographic encounter makes visible the complex dynamics of intergenerational relationships and identities in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The analysis draws on sequences of ethnographic film-making with young people, focusing on exchanges between the child-interviewers and their adult subjects in order to explore the ways in which residents articulate their experiences of life in low-income neighbourhoods. These include sequences in which adults emphasize the positive aspects of community life and disavow wider negative stereotypes and imaginings of poorer places (Parker and Garner 2010). The chapter suggests that these narratives can be understood as a form of place-making work through which residents seek to construct a positive identity in the context of dominant stigmatizing narratives about the negative social burden of life in low-income neighbourhoods (Geddes et al. 2010; Pearce 2012). The chapter argues that these identity practices can offer an alternative perspective on intergenerational relationships to that offered in policy, practice and media representations of low-income neighbourhoods (Fink and Lomax 2014 in press; McKendrick et al. 2008), not least that these exchanges might serve as collective bonding work between generations and within neighbourhoods in response to external identity threats. In addition, following Valentine’s (2008) proposal for an evidenced-based examination of the practices of living and Fox Gotham’s (2003) emphasis on the fluid nature of social identity, the chapter considers how a focus on lived encounters can enable a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which adults and children negotiate a sense of community and inclusion in the face of significant social and economic challenges.
Families, Relationships and Societies, 2021
Our article draws on research undertaken with children during the 2020–21 COVID-19 pandemic in or... more Our article draws on research undertaken with children during the 2020–21 COVID-19 pandemic in order to consider the potential of digitally mediated participatory research for child-centred research practice. Our specific focus is on how children’s inclusion can be centred in the absence of opportunities to meet in person. We reflect on how we sought to support children’s engagement through offline and online creative activities and explore how these digitally mediated spaces can facilitate children’s inclusion, creative engagement and dialogue. We offer examples from our arts-based, digitally mediated research to consider how researchers might work remotely, yet inclusively, in contexts where children have been marginalised and their voices silenced. Our research suggests that scaffolding creative activities through bespoke digital animation and asynchronous chat can facilitate children to participate in ways of their choosing. However, to address equity of inclusion researchers mu...
A set of seven digital animations created by and for children, first introducing the project and ... more A set of seven digital animations created by and for children, first introducing the project and then one for each activity during Phase One (English school holidays - July-August 2020). These combine stop-start animation, cartoons, line drawings, collage and photographs to visually communicate the project as well as illustrating the variety of creative possibilities. There are six weeks of activities, each with a theme and an associated activity sheet with creative resources which provided a digital and printable text to prompt, stimulate and encourage children's reflections.
Handbook of Research Ethics and Scientific Integrity
This chapter takes as its focus the contemporary phenomenon of generating, sharing and consuming ... more This chapter takes as its focus the contemporary phenomenon of generating, sharing and consuming visual accounts of social life in online media and the analytic challenges this presents for visual researchers. The emergence of new online cultures and social networking sites, and the affordances these offer for creating, modifying and circulating visual content, recalls Mirzoeff’s (2011: 14) suggestion for a critical examination of how institutions and individuals mobilise specific forms of visuality to order the world and the ways individuals themselves reproduce or resist these ways of seeing. A central concern of this chapter is, therefore, to understand what social relations are produced, reproduced and resisted by the production and circulation of images online and what methodological tools might be required to understand these processes as they become increasingly significant in the mundane routines of everyday life.
Seeing the World through Children’s Eyes
As a means of accessing voice, creative visual methods have become de rigour in research with chi... more As a means of accessing voice, creative visual methods have become de rigour in research with children. However, their popularity can belie the multiple challenges inherent in their use. This includes how to meaningfully involve young children as knowledge producers and how to interpret children’s meaning-making practices, particularly for very young children who are only beginning to use spoken language. This chapter addresses these challenges to consider how visual methods, offered as part of a collaborative multimodal methodology can support children’s participation and offer new perspectives on children’s ways of knowing. The chapter sets out the principles underpinning this methodology, drawing on examples from research undertaken in the UK in which photo-elicitation and puppet-production were employed with children during farm visits and museum trips to explore children’s experiences of agricultural landscapes. Data from the research (photographs, transcribed speech and body movement) are used to illustrate the ways in which visual methods within a collaborative multimodal framework can support children’s linguistic and non-linguistic, visual and kinaesthetic meaning-making practices. The chapter then considers how visual methods within such a framework might be developed in future research with children
Children's Geographies
Childhoods past and present: Anxiety and idyll in reminiscences of childhood outdoor play and con... more Childhoods past and present: Anxiety and idyll in reminiscences of childhood outdoor play and contemporary parenting practices Outdoor play is considered an essential aspect of a 'proper childhood'. However, unsupervised outside play is declining, a decline attributed to parental anxieties about children's safety. However what drives these anxieties and how this impacts on contemporary outdoor play is less clear. Our paper seeks to explore this through an analysis of adult narratives generated through digital map-making and forum discussion about where they played as children and where they would allow a child to play unsupervised now. Our analysis explores the nature of these narratives and pivotal moments in which adults articulated the disconnect between their own recollections of idyllic spatial freedom and the spatial restrictions they place on contemporary children. This offers a rich understanding of how parents navigate conflicting cultural imperatives on risk-avoidance and children's rights to a 'good' childhood.
Dementia (London, England), 2018
In dementia research, there is limited knowledge about how people with dementia experience their ... more In dementia research, there is limited knowledge about how people with dementia experience their daily life including how they experience the services they attend. This means a lack of knowledge about how people with dementia judge the quality of services provided for them. In this study visual and creative methods were used to understand the experience of people with early stage dementia who attend an adult school, Voksenskolen for Undervisning og Kommunikation (VUK) in Denmark. The study explored the students' experience of being a student at VUK and what it means to engage in life-long learning. Alongside the aim to evaluate the service provided for them, seen from their perspective. Photo-elicitation was used, with cameras provided to each student, who took photographs of their school and home life. Students' photographs were used to support focus group discussions, with the images integral to the process of talking about and recalling stories. Ten students were recruite...
Girlhood Studies, 2016
In our article we consider the ethical challenges engendered by participatory visual research wit... more In our article we consider the ethical challenges engendered by participatory visual research with girls. Drawing on photographs taken by and of girls we explore how to reconcile the challenges generated by disseminating images of girls while supporting them to have a voice in research. Our concerns are focused on how to maintain the integrity of girls' visual voices while protecting them from any harm that may result from revealing visual information about them. This issue has become increasingly germane for visual sociology since developments in digital technology and visual culture mean that images can circulate instantaneously and in perpetuity, potentially stripping them of their creators' intentions and infusing them with new and unintended meanings. We consider different approaches to resolving our ongoing ethical dilemma and examine their potential for honoring the flesh-and-blood girl's right to be heard amidst concerns about her digital visibility.
Sociological Research Online, 2010
Our research is concerned with cultural representations of birth and mothering and, as part of th... more Our research is concerned with cultural representations of birth and mothering and, as part of this, we are engaged with debates concerning competing theoretical and methodological approaches to the analysis of visual images. In particular we are interested in how meanings of an image are reflexively produced, managed and negotiated. That is, whether and to what extent interpretation is influenced by personal experience, emotion and memory; the ways in which the context of viewing may mediate meaning; and how the relationship between researcher and research subject may shape the interpretative process. In order to explore such questions, this paper draws on the tape-recorded discussion of a group of women collectively viewing images of new mothers. These included photographs of mothers and their newborns taken by the Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra, and photographs of us, the authors, as new mothers, taken by our respective families. The paper blends the analytic framework of con...
Fields: journal of Huddersfield student research, 2021
This issue includes contributions from across the University's academic schools, reflecting the r... more This issue includes contributions from across the University's academic schools, reflecting the range and quality of research undertaken in the arts and humanities, the social sciences, education, business, science, health, technology and engineering. Each paper builds on research and scholarship in the author's field in order to
Sociological Research Online
This inaugural special issue of ‘Beyond the Text’ brings together a collection of visual arts (an... more This inaugural special issue of ‘Beyond the Text’ brings together a collection of visual arts (animation, creative and fine art, film, photographs, and zines) produced by children, young people, families, artists, and academics as part of co-created research during the 2020–2021 coronavirus pandemic. Our aim, in making these pieces available in this new publication format, is to illustrate the potential of visual arts as a form of co-creation and knowledge exchange which can transcend the challenges of researching ‘at a distance’, enable participants and co-researchers to share their stories, and support different ways of knowing for academic, policy, and public audiences. This is not to suggest that such methods offer transparent windows into participants’ worlds. As the reflections from the contributing authors consider, visual arts outputs leave room for audience interpretations, making them vulnerable to alternative readings, generating challenges and opportunities about how muc...
Sociological Research Online , 2022
'Our Voices' is an animation co-created with children aged 9-11 during the 2020-2021 global pande... more 'Our Voices' is an animation co-created with children aged 9-11 during the 2020-2021 global pandemic. A short, stop-start animation of children's visual, audio and textual representations of their experiences offers a visceral account of the pandemic in England from their perspectives. In making available the animation in this inaugural issue of 'Beyond the Text', we have two key aims. The first is to enable children, who have been barely seen and little heard during the pandemic, to voice their experiences in accordance with their aspirations. The second is to reflect upon the process of transforming creative data made by and with children into an animation that is representative of children's diverse experiences and acknowledges their contributions in ways which enable audiences to engage through 'seeing'. Accordingly, our accompanying text explores how, through a feminist ethics of care, we sought to co-produce an animation with children which delivers key messages from them and acknowledges their role as co-researchers while maintaining their anonymity. In describing our methodological and ethical practices, we aspire to make visible the relational, dialogic processes inherent in co-production, offering viewers a way of seeing the complexity of children's experiences through the multi-layered affordances of participatory animation.
Editorial - Special Inaugural issue of ‘Beyond the Text’ Sociological Research Online, 27 (3)., 2022
This inaugural special issue of 'Beyond the Text' brings together a collection of visual arts (an... more This inaugural special issue of 'Beyond the Text' brings together a collection of visual arts (animation, creative and fine art, film, photographs, and zines) produced by children, young people, families, artists, and academics as part of co-created research during the 2020-2021 coronavirus pandemic. Our aim, in making these pieces available in this new publication format, is to illustrate the potential of visual arts as a form of co-creation and knowledge exchange which can transcend the challenges of researching 'at a distance', enable participants and co-researchers to share their stories, and support different ways of knowing for academic, policy, and public audiences. This is not to suggest that such methods offer transparent windows into participants' worlds. As the reflections from the contributing authors consider, visual arts outputs leave room for audience interpretations, making them vulnerable to alternative readings, generating challenges and opportunities about how much it is possible to know about another and what is ethical to share. It is to these issues of ethics, representation, and voice that this special issue attends, reflecting on the possibilities of arts-based approaches for knowledge generation and exchange in and beyond the coronavirus pandemic.
This report details the application of the Participatory Design Model (IO2), in each of the CyGen... more This report details the application of the Participatory Design Model (IO2), in each of the CyGen partner countries: the UK, Denmark, Belgium and Greece, with emphasis on the workshop elements of data collection. First, we offer an overview of the Design Cycle to contextualise our reflections, including our analytical approach and the key ethical considerations which underpinned the project. Intellectual Outputs (IO3: Design Workshops), describes the work completed in each of our partner schools, applying the methodological framework and DesignKit presented in IO2, and building on the needs analysis completed during IO1: Scoping and Needs Analysis, to produce the educational resources reported in IO3: Co-Designed Digital Education Package. This report captures the team’s reflections on the following tasks, completed in fulfilment of IO3
Handbook of Research Ethics and Scientific Integrity, 2019
SAGE Research Methods Foundations, 2020
Ethnography 1. "treats people as knowledgeable, situated agents from whom researchers can learn a... more Ethnography 1. "treats people as knowledgeable, situated agents from whom researchers can learn a great deal about how the world is seen, lived and works" 2. "it is an extended, detailed, 'immersive', inductive methodology" 3. "it can involve a 'shamelessly eclectic' and 'methodologically opportunist' combination of research methods but, at its core, there must be an extended period of 'participant observation' research (Jackson, 1985: 169)." 4. "participant observation uniquely involves studying both what people say they do and why, and what they are seen to do and say to others about this." 5. it "inevitably involves tricky negotiations between researchers' words and deeds" 6 ." its main research tool is the researcher and the ways in which he or she is used to acting in more familiar circumstances and learns to act in the often strange and strained circumstances of his or her research settings."
Intergenerational Space, 2015
This chapter draws on insights from visual sociology and human geography to consider the ethnogra... more This chapter draws on insights from visual sociology and human geography to consider the ethnographic encounter as a space of intergenerational exchange. Building on theoretical developments in children’s geography and sociology (Fox Gotham 2003; Hendrick 2003; Valentine 2008; Vanderbeck and Dunkley 2004) and methodological insights from visual sociology and discursive psychology (Luttrell 2010; Taylor 2010; Wetherell 1998) the chapter considers the ways in which the ethnographic encounter makes visible the complex dynamics of intergenerational relationships and identities in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The analysis draws on sequences of ethnographic film-making with young people, focusing on exchanges between the child-interviewers and their adult subjects in order to explore the ways in which residents articulate their experiences of life in low-income neighbourhoods. These include sequences in which adults emphasize the positive aspects of community life and disavow wider negative stereotypes and imaginings of poorer places (Parker and Garner 2010). The chapter suggests that these narratives can be understood as a form of place-making work through which residents seek to construct a positive identity in the context of dominant stigmatizing narratives about the negative social burden of life in low-income neighbourhoods (Geddes et al. 2010; Pearce 2012). The chapter argues that these identity practices can offer an alternative perspective on intergenerational relationships to that offered in policy, practice and media representations of low-income neighbourhoods (Fink and Lomax 2014 in press; McKendrick et al. 2008), not least that these exchanges might serve as collective bonding work between generations and within neighbourhoods in response to external identity threats. In addition, following Valentine’s (2008) proposal for an evidenced-based examination of the practices of living and Fox Gotham’s (2003) emphasis on the fluid nature of social identity, the chapter considers how a focus on lived encounters can enable a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which adults and children negotiate a sense of community and inclusion in the face of significant social and economic challenges.
Families, Relationships and Societies, 2021
Our article draws on research undertaken with children during the 2020–21 COVID-19 pandemic in or... more Our article draws on research undertaken with children during the 2020–21 COVID-19 pandemic in order to consider the potential of digitally mediated participatory research for child-centred research practice. Our specific focus is on how children’s inclusion can be centred in the absence of opportunities to meet in person. We reflect on how we sought to support children’s engagement through offline and online creative activities and explore how these digitally mediated spaces can facilitate children’s inclusion, creative engagement and dialogue. We offer examples from our arts-based, digitally mediated research to consider how researchers might work remotely, yet inclusively, in contexts where children have been marginalised and their voices silenced. Our research suggests that scaffolding creative activities through bespoke digital animation and asynchronous chat can facilitate children to participate in ways of their choosing. However, to address equity of inclusion researchers mu...
A set of seven digital animations created by and for children, first introducing the project and ... more A set of seven digital animations created by and for children, first introducing the project and then one for each activity during Phase One (English school holidays - July-August 2020). These combine stop-start animation, cartoons, line drawings, collage and photographs to visually communicate the project as well as illustrating the variety of creative possibilities. There are six weeks of activities, each with a theme and an associated activity sheet with creative resources which provided a digital and printable text to prompt, stimulate and encourage children's reflections.
Handbook of Research Ethics and Scientific Integrity
This chapter takes as its focus the contemporary phenomenon of generating, sharing and consuming ... more This chapter takes as its focus the contemporary phenomenon of generating, sharing and consuming visual accounts of social life in online media and the analytic challenges this presents for visual researchers. The emergence of new online cultures and social networking sites, and the affordances these offer for creating, modifying and circulating visual content, recalls Mirzoeff’s (2011: 14) suggestion for a critical examination of how institutions and individuals mobilise specific forms of visuality to order the world and the ways individuals themselves reproduce or resist these ways of seeing. A central concern of this chapter is, therefore, to understand what social relations are produced, reproduced and resisted by the production and circulation of images online and what methodological tools might be required to understand these processes as they become increasingly significant in the mundane routines of everyday life.
Seeing the World through Children’s Eyes
As a means of accessing voice, creative visual methods have become de rigour in research with chi... more As a means of accessing voice, creative visual methods have become de rigour in research with children. However, their popularity can belie the multiple challenges inherent in their use. This includes how to meaningfully involve young children as knowledge producers and how to interpret children’s meaning-making practices, particularly for very young children who are only beginning to use spoken language. This chapter addresses these challenges to consider how visual methods, offered as part of a collaborative multimodal methodology can support children’s participation and offer new perspectives on children’s ways of knowing. The chapter sets out the principles underpinning this methodology, drawing on examples from research undertaken in the UK in which photo-elicitation and puppet-production were employed with children during farm visits and museum trips to explore children’s experiences of agricultural landscapes. Data from the research (photographs, transcribed speech and body movement) are used to illustrate the ways in which visual methods within a collaborative multimodal framework can support children’s linguistic and non-linguistic, visual and kinaesthetic meaning-making practices. The chapter then considers how visual methods within such a framework might be developed in future research with children
Children's Geographies
Childhoods past and present: Anxiety and idyll in reminiscences of childhood outdoor play and con... more Childhoods past and present: Anxiety and idyll in reminiscences of childhood outdoor play and contemporary parenting practices Outdoor play is considered an essential aspect of a 'proper childhood'. However, unsupervised outside play is declining, a decline attributed to parental anxieties about children's safety. However what drives these anxieties and how this impacts on contemporary outdoor play is less clear. Our paper seeks to explore this through an analysis of adult narratives generated through digital map-making and forum discussion about where they played as children and where they would allow a child to play unsupervised now. Our analysis explores the nature of these narratives and pivotal moments in which adults articulated the disconnect between their own recollections of idyllic spatial freedom and the spatial restrictions they place on contemporary children. This offers a rich understanding of how parents navigate conflicting cultural imperatives on risk-avoidance and children's rights to a 'good' childhood.
Dementia (London, England), 2018
In dementia research, there is limited knowledge about how people with dementia experience their ... more In dementia research, there is limited knowledge about how people with dementia experience their daily life including how they experience the services they attend. This means a lack of knowledge about how people with dementia judge the quality of services provided for them. In this study visual and creative methods were used to understand the experience of people with early stage dementia who attend an adult school, Voksenskolen for Undervisning og Kommunikation (VUK) in Denmark. The study explored the students' experience of being a student at VUK and what it means to engage in life-long learning. Alongside the aim to evaluate the service provided for them, seen from their perspective. Photo-elicitation was used, with cameras provided to each student, who took photographs of their school and home life. Students' photographs were used to support focus group discussions, with the images integral to the process of talking about and recalling stories. Ten students were recruite...
Girlhood Studies, 2016
In our article we consider the ethical challenges engendered by participatory visual research wit... more In our article we consider the ethical challenges engendered by participatory visual research with girls. Drawing on photographs taken by and of girls we explore how to reconcile the challenges generated by disseminating images of girls while supporting them to have a voice in research. Our concerns are focused on how to maintain the integrity of girls' visual voices while protecting them from any harm that may result from revealing visual information about them. This issue has become increasingly germane for visual sociology since developments in digital technology and visual culture mean that images can circulate instantaneously and in perpetuity, potentially stripping them of their creators' intentions and infusing them with new and unintended meanings. We consider different approaches to resolving our ongoing ethical dilemma and examine their potential for honoring the flesh-and-blood girl's right to be heard amidst concerns about her digital visibility.
Sociological Research Online, 2010
Our research is concerned with cultural representations of birth and mothering and, as part of th... more Our research is concerned with cultural representations of birth and mothering and, as part of this, we are engaged with debates concerning competing theoretical and methodological approaches to the analysis of visual images. In particular we are interested in how meanings of an image are reflexively produced, managed and negotiated. That is, whether and to what extent interpretation is influenced by personal experience, emotion and memory; the ways in which the context of viewing may mediate meaning; and how the relationship between researcher and research subject may shape the interpretative process. In order to explore such questions, this paper draws on the tape-recorded discussion of a group of women collectively viewing images of new mothers. These included photographs of mothers and their newborns taken by the Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra, and photographs of us, the authors, as new mothers, taken by our respective families. The paper blends the analytic framework of con...
In our visually saturated culture there is a growing recognition that visual images have the pote... more In our visually saturated culture there is a growing recognition that visual images have the potential to evoke emphatic understanding of the ways in which other people experience their worlds. There has been an increasing shift towards employing techniques of visual data production with participants, which is often seen as a panacea for the problems of power hierarchies, representation and voice in sociological research. However, the easy marriage between the visual and the participatory needs to be questioned when we are working with marginalised groups and communities.
This panel session introduces three presentations that explore both the opportunities, and the ethical and practical difficulties, raised by visual research approaches. Drawing on studies that employed the techniques of sandboxing, collaging and film making, the panel considers the visual as a vehicle for participatory research whilst acknowledging the power relations inherent in the processes of design, production and dissemination. Each presentation focuses on one of these three aspects of the research process.
Dawn Mannay discusses design by reflecting on the sandboxing approach, ‘the world technique’; and responds to the argument that therapeutic methods should not be taken out of the consulting room. Janet Fink presents insights into data production drawing on community based inquiry and the process of creating collages. Helen Lomax considers the challenges of employing a participatory approach to the editing and dissemination of filmed data, images and text. Together the three papers respond to current debates around visual methodologies, participatory research and situated ethics in work with marginalised communities.
Sage Handbook of Visual Methods (2nd edition). , 2019
This chapter takes as its focus the contemporary phenomenon of generating, sharing and consuming... more This chapter takes as its focus the contemporary phenomenon of generating, sharing and consuming visual accounts of social life in online media and the analytic challenges this presents for visual researchers. The emergence of new online cultures and social networking sites, and the affordances these offer for creating, modifying and circulating visual content, recalls Mirzoeff’s (2011: 14) suggestion for a critical examination of how institutions and individuals mobilise specific forms of visuality to order the world and the ways individuals themselves reproduce or resist these ways of seeing. A central concern of this chapter is, therefore, to understand what social relations are produced, reproduced and resisted by the production and circulation of images online and what methodological tools might be required to understand these processes as they become increasingly significant in the mundane routines of everyday life.