A Journey Through Methods In the Company of Readers
Danielle Fuller (Birmingham) In this talk I will explore challenges posed by some of the different research methods that I have employed to investigate reading as a social practice in the early twenty-first century. Focussing in on two specific methods – focus groups and building digital tools – I will draw upon examples and incidents from three collaborative reading studies projects (Beyond the Book, Reading Lives and Reading for Life). For me, the phrase “it’s not on my map!” sums up most of my academic career, but especially the last 14 years, a time during which I have frequently been doing research using methods in which I have not received any formal training. The creative-critical style of my presentation thus attempts to examine my experiences of a rather disoriented journey by adopting the type of storytelling strategies developed by cultural anthropologists. [back]
