Revisiting innovation in qualitative research

In this issue of Qualitative Researcher we return to questions of innovation within qualitative research practice. Readers will be aware of the many recent calls to methodological development and innovation across the social sciences. These have stemmed partly from the external environments within which and against which social scientific research is situated. There are increasing imperatives, for example, to improve the quality and impact of social research, and a drive to achieve this through research excellence, innovation and the development of cutting edge methods of inquiry. At the same time there has been and continues to be an ongoing creative process of methodological development from within and across disciplines. Qualitative research has been at the forefront of such methodological creativity. The art and craft of qualitative research has not stood still, and there has been considerable recent development of both method and methodology. For example, the increased use of visual and multimodal methods of enquiry, the marrying of social science with arts-based practices, and the development of methods with and within digital technologies and environments.