Publications

It has become somewhat of a truism that qualitative research, and particularly fieldwork, cannot be taught but is best learnt in practice, out there, in the field. This can likely be traced to the early days of the Chicago School where students were sent out to study a tract of the census, or neighbourhood, at…

Over the past decade there have been a number of calls from across the social sciences to engage music as both the object of study and a tool for research (cf. Revill, 2000; Connell and Gibson, 2003; Wood et al., 2007). These calls come at time when major shifts in technology and cultural economic policy…

This paper draws from a qualitative PhD study in Central Scotland to focus on research participants’ interpretations of my (the researcher’s) body. The research investigated the embodied experiences of health among girls aged 10-14 (P6-S4)1, through discursive spaces of schoolbased physical activity. In three Scottish secondary schools, participant observation and semi-structured interviews were conducted with…

Much excitement, public and scholastic, surrounds the ascent of Facebook, a social-networking website attracting over 500 million users since its inception in 2004. Facebook has been increasingly integrated into the public sphere, proliferating media activities, communication practices, and social experiences. It has become a glowing reference to the mounting centrality of internet technologies in our…

Transcription of interview material can be a daunting task for the qualitative researcher, not only in terms of the extensive time requirement, but also due to concerns around producing transcripts that ‘accurately’ reflect interviews. This reflection paper addresses some of the tensions I experienced as a geography student encountering transcription for the first time. It…

Set against the established political mantra of partnership working, this paper considers the conceptual framings of the local authority partnership agenda in academic debates and concurrent empirical research. We compare and contrast the changing formal territorial remits of political intervention with the spatial constructs understood and employed by those stakeholders responsible for delivering childrens services….

Older age is one stage of the lifecourse where dignity maybe threatened due to the vulnerability created by increased incapacity, frailty and cognitive decline in combination with a lack of social and economic resources. Evidence suggests that it is in contact with health and welfare services where dignity is most threatened. This study explored the…

Drawing on ethnographies of three areas of hospital life in the United Kingdom, this article explores the different logics played out through moments of access to hospital services. The authors make explicit the character of the hospital as heterotopia where different social actors are required to “fit” in with the organizational requirements of the hospital….

Globalization has a pervasive influence across rural Europe. From the forests of Scandinavia to the orange groves of the Mediterranean, from remote Irish farmsteads to German commuter villages, the economic, social, cultural and political lives of rural localities are being continually refashioned by globalization processes that stretch, intensity, multiply and create new relations, ties and…

Conspiracy narratives and ways of knowing are a highly visible, accessible and increasingly commonplace part of contemporary global life, permeating across spheres of politics, science and popular culture. Catalyzed by rapid developments in networked media and a political climate of enhanced government secrecy following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, thinking conspiratorially about power forms part of…