Live Methods with Les Back

Live Sociology workshop with Les Back

For fifty years, the qualitative research imagination was held hostage by the tape recorder. Everett Hughes suggests that, as a result, sociology became the “science of the interview” (Hughes 1971). To do qualitative research meant to conduct interviews, transcribe them and present the idiomatic voices of our participants in anonymous block quotations. Today, there are more opportunities than ever to reimagine research craft in a more sociable way using a variety of different modes and techniques. This is referred to as 'live sociology' or 'live methods' in which the relationship between knowledge, modes of data and new media have been expanded and the relationship between research and time has also been recalibrated.

We are encountering unprecedented opportunities to work differently as a result and communicate and circulate the fruits of our work in new ways, combined with the old established conventions. Some of our old conventions are being revived in this environment, from drawing to Polaroid photographs to field notes. In these workshops we will review some of the ways we might think about how we think and talk about these opportunities, drawing on examples of contemporary qualitative research.

In between the sessions participants will also be asked to conduct their own experiments and bring their own examples of research craft into the workshop.

Session one

Date: 4 August
Time: 6.30pm to 8:00pm
Introducing Live Sociology and Examples from the Qualitative Research Renaissance

Session two

Date: 18 August
Time: 6.30pm to 8:00pm
Using Live Methods and Practical Reflections

About our facilitator

Les Back is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow. He is also a journalist, broadcaster and musician. He is a Trustee of the Sociological Review Foundation and President of the British Sociological Association.

His published work is mainly in the areas of the sociology of race and racism, ethnicity, multiculturalism, urban culture, music and sport. Key publications include Academic Diary: Why Higher Education Still Matters (2016), Migrant City (2018), and The Unfinished Politics of Race (2022). A proponent of public or live sociology using digital communication, he hosts the Recovering Community podcast and was previously Director of the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths University, London.

You will receive a Zoom link and further info about the workshop the week before we begin.

Tickets

Please register by August 1st! 

Any questions? Email Danielle Galway events@thesociologicalreview.com