RTC Talking Methods Seminar: Inclusive Methods, Queer Data and Who Counts?
Venue
Practice Suite 1.12 (Chrystal Macmillan Building) or Online via the live-stream by signing up to this seminar - the joining link will be sent closer to the eventDescription
About the seminar:
Whether we use surveys or interviews, ethnographies or focus groups – the methods we use as researchers do not arrive with us as some sort of apolitical or ahistorical artefact. They do not collect information about the outside world that is static, fixed and simply waiting to be uncovered. Rather, methods are crafted, tweaked and changed to serve the particular interests of individuals, organisations or ways of thinking.
So what does this mean for projects investigating the lives and experiences of minoritised communities? Do methods equally convey the experiences of the most minoritised and least minoritised in minority groups? And might the methods we deploy in our research construct ideas about the groups under investigation?
Departing from the idea that we always need to collect more or better data, this session applies a queer lens to research methods and poses questions about neutrality, biases, politics and power.
Dr Kevin Guyan is a researcher and writer whose work explores the intersection of data and identity, particularly as it relates to LGBTQ people in the UK. He is author of the book Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action (Bloomsbury, 2022) and works as a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh.