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Creative Research Methods


The Community brings together international and interdisciplinary expertise from the arts, humanities and translation and social sciences to explore creativity within research methods. Our workshops and learning resources inquire into how we can research the world using techniques beyond simple interviews, surveys, textual analysis and participant observation.

Cross-campus activities are designed to extend and enhance students’ existing knowledge of social research methods. Where standard qualitative social research methods training tends to focus on using data-gathering instruments such as interviews, focus groups, ethnographic observations, and document analysis, this community considers emerging or more marginal bodies of sociological work which use or are influenced by creative and artistic practice and sensory engagement to gather, produce or analyse data sociologically.
Learning Community Activities
Past Events
  • First edition of EUTOPIA LU ‘EUTOPIA LU 'Creative Research Methods' coordinated by Hannah Jones (UW) - Jan-March 2022 – More info coming soon
  • Cross-campus workshops-series on creative research methods - Nov 2021-March 2022 – Please check this page or EUTOPIA Creative Research Methods - Upcoming Workshops & Events for news on upcoming cross-campus workshops for 2023.
  • 'Visual Research Methods in Research: EUTOPIA Creative Methods Workshop 1, featuring speakers Katarina Despotovic, Dr Helena Holgersson, Dr Hannah Jones, Professor Kaisa Koskinnen, Dr Patrícia Pereira and Dr Nike K. Pokorn - December 14, 2021 - A cross-campus day workshop hosted online between Finland, Slovenia, Sweden and the UK, presenting a variety of visual techniques that can be used in social research. For more information on this past activity, please visit: EUTOPIA Creative Research Methods - Past Activities
  • The first scheduled workshop in the 2022-23 cross-campus series was: 'Archival Research Methods: EUTOPIA Creative Methods Workshop 2', featuring speakers Dr Outi Paloposki, Dr Nirmal Puwar, Dr Helena Holgersson, Dr Hannah Jones, Dr Patrícia Pereira and Dr Nike K. Pokorn - December 12, 2022. This online workshop explored creative archival research, asking how can archives be engaged with beyond traditional limits, shaping social research and translation studies as methodology and practice. For more information on this past activity, please visit: EUTOPIA Creative Research Methods - Past Activities
Creative Research Methods Learning Resources

The Creative Research Methods Learning Community holds an ever-expanding bank of Learning Resources. These original resources have been devised by international researchers and practitioners, for students and scholars interested in learning about the world using techniques beyond simple interviews, surveys, textual analysis and participant observation. To date, our methods and approaches have included:

  • Archives in Microhistorical Translations Studies
  • Carrying the Body as Archive
  • Ethics of Creative Research Methods
  • Ethnographic Archives
  • In Conversation: “Dig Where You Stand” (Researching Jobs Using Archival Method)
  • Linguistic Landscapes
  • Love and Break-up Letters
  • Theatre Methods
  • Walking Methods

Access to our complete bank of Learning Resources is available through visiting our Creative Research Methods landing page. Each unit contains an overview, video and audio material, as well as extensive reading lists. Suggestions for practical learning tasks are featured in selected units.
 


How to get involved?
(Students and educators)
Contact the EUTOPIA curriculum team: Jo Angouri (J.Angouri@warwick.ac.uk) and Karen Triquet (karen.triquet@vub.be).
Learning Community Members
Lead: Hannah Jones (UW). Email: h.jones.1@warwick.ac.uk

Dr Hannah Jones is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick. She writes, researches and teaches on racism, belonging and migration, and on critical public sociology. Aside from the EUTOPIA ‘Creative Research Methods’ unit, she teaches modules on ‘Racism and Xenophobia’, ‘Race and the Making of the Modern World’, and ‘Social Research for Social Change’. Her most recent book is Violent Ignorance: Confronting racism and migration control (2021). Her previous publications include Go Home? The politics of immigration controversies (2017), Stories of Cosmopolitan Belonging: Emotion and Location (2014), and Negotiating Cohesion, Inequality and Change: Uncomfortable Positions in Local Government (2013), which won the BSA Phillip Abrams Prize for best first book in UK sociology. (Hannah Jones (warwick.ac.uk)

Partner: Helena Holgersson (GU). Email: helena.holgersson@kultur.gu.se

Helena Holgersson, post-doc in Cultural Studies. In the spring of 2011 she defended her Ph.D. thesis in Sociology, Icke-medborgarskapets urbana geografi (The Urban Geography of Non-citizenship). Helena is the course leader of the unit The Post-industrial City in the course Scandinavian Studies: Cultural and Social Perspectives, and also teaches in the courses Studying Our Time and Culture and Democracy and the City in Culture, Bachelor’s programme, in the master degree programme The Practical Field of Culture, and in undergraduate courses in Cultural Studies. At the Department of Sociology she has previously taught courses such as Social Control in Contemporary Society, Qualitative Methods, Alienation, Exlusion and Modernity: Cultural Sociological Perspectives and Living in Europe: Work, Welfare and Family.

https://www.gu.se/en/about/find-staff/helenaholgersson 

Partner: Nike Kocijančič Pokorn (UL). Email: nike.pokorn@ff.uni-lj.si

Nike K. Pokorn is Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Ljubljana and the current director of the network International Doctorate in Translation Studies. Her research interests include translation and censorship, directionality in translation and public-service interpreting and translation. She was a member of the 8-member European Master's in Translation (EMT) Expert Group appointed by the Directorate General for Translation at the European Commission that was responsible for setting up the EMT network and creating the EMT competences document. She won the European Society for Translation Studies Award for her doctoral thesis, and served two terms on the board of EST – European Society for Translation Studies, and two terms on the board of EMT – European Master’s in Translation Network. She is author of Challenging the Traditional Axioms (Benjamins, 2005) and Post-Socialist Translation Practices (Benjamins, 2012) and co-editor with Kaisa Koskinen of The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Ethics (2021). (nike.pokorn(ff.uni-lj.si)

Partner: Patricia Pereira (UNL). Email: patricia.pereira@fcsh.unl.pt

I hold a PhD in Urban Sociology from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (NOVA-FCSH, 2013). I am postdoctoral researcher at CICS.NOVA since 2014. My project, “Port city lives: exploring the dynamics of gentrification in Lisbon”, aims at: (1) characterising gentrification related displacement in two neighbourhoods, by exploring five dimensions (historical, economical, political, cultural, and social) and (2) analysing citywide resistance against gentrification.

I am, since 2015, Invited Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology of the Faculty of  Social & Human Sciences – Universidade Nova de Lisboa (NOVA-FCSH). I teach mainly undergraduate courses in: Micro/Everyday Life Sociology, Urban Sociology, Sociology of the Territory. I also contribute periodically to the masters and PhD Programs in Urban Studies. I am an adjunct editor of the journal Forum Sociológico as well as co-coordinator of the Urban Sociology Research Network of the European Sociological Association – RN37.

See full CV at: http://fcsh.unl.pt/faculdade/docentes/ppereira

Assistant: Emily Pickthall (UW). Email: Emily.Pickthall.1@warwick.ac.uk

Emily is the Learning Development Assistant for the EUTOPIA ‘Creative Research Methods’ unit. Since 2021, she has been studying towards an ESRC-funded PhD in Sociology at the University of Warwick, with research interests in sex work, gender and sexuality studies, the sociology of work and creative research methods and pedagogies. Previously, she worked in academic publishing as a member of editorial staff at Routledge, Taylor & Francis.