Creative Writing for Social Research

A Practical Guide
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4473-5598-4
Verlag: Policy Press

Buch, Englisch, 224 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 170 mm x 244 mm, Gewicht: 395 g

This groundbreaking book brings creative writing to social research. Its innovative format includes creatively written contributions by researchers from a range of disciplines, modelling the techniques outlined by the authors. The book is user-friendly and shows readers:

• how to write creatively as a social researcher;

• how creative writing can help researchers to work with participants and generate data;

• how researchers can use creative writing to analyse data and communicate findings.

Inviting beginners and more experienced researchers to explore new ways of writing, this book introduces readers to creatively written research in a variety of formats including plays and poems, videos and comics. It not only gives social researchers permission to write creatively but also shows them how to do so.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kara, Helen

Phillips, Richard

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Forschung und Information Forschungsmethodik, Wissenschaftliche Ausstattung
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein Empirische Sozialforschung, Statistik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

INTRODUCTION

Definitions

~ Social research

~ Creativity and creative

~ Writing and creative writing

Synergies between creative writing and social research

What follows

DOING CREATIVE WRITING

Introduction

Doing it yourself: getting started

~ Reading for writing

~ Small steps and time frames

~ Warm-up exercises

Putting yourself in the picture

~ Writing in the first person

~ Diaries and journals

Observation and description

~ Autoethnography

~ Observational writing and the implied observer

~ Stories and storying

~ Collecting and transcribing stories

Writing about ideas: essays and lists

~ Essays

~ Lists and listing

Doing it yourself: following through

~ Drafting and editing

~ Seeking and receiving feedback

~ Writing together

DOING RSEARCH, GENERATING DATA, WORKING WITH PARTICIPANTS

Introduction

~ Rationale

~ Ethics

Getting started: participatory creative writing for social research

~ What is a participant?

~ How to invite or recruit participants

Workshops and groups

~ How to draw participants together into a cohesive group

~ Playful workshops

~ Getting started, warming up

~ How to write, review and revise together: workshopping

~ Scope

Working with individuals

~ Varying roles for participants and facilitators

Data and findings: process and product

~ Observing and documenting the creative writing process

~ Product: outputs and impacts

EXPLORING AND ARTICULATING FINDINGS

Introduction

Data analysis

~ Fiction in data analysis

~ Poetry in data analysis

~ Play and screenplay writing in data analysis

Dissemination

~ Visual methods of writing for dissemination

~ Performance for dissemination

~ Comedy in dissemination

Finding and telling stories; storying

SEARCHING AND QUEER(ING) WRITING

Introduction

Searching

Queer(ing) writing

Über Autor(innen)

Phillips, Richard
Richard Phillips is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield. He is a specialist in creative and arts-led research methodologies, which he practises in his own work and encourages students to try in the field trips he leads in cities from Liverpool to New York. Richard’s books include Georges Perec’s Geographies (2019), Fieldwork for Human Geography (2012), Sex, Politics and Empire (1996), and Mapping Men and Empire: A Geography of Adventure (1997).

Kara, Helen
Helen Kara is a leading independent researcher, author, teacher and speaker specialising in research methods, particularly creative methods, and research ethics. With over twenty years’ experience as an independent researcher Helen now teaches doctoral students and staff at higher education institutions worldwide. She is a prolific academic author with over 25 titles and 2000 citations; notably Creative Research Methods: A Practical Guide and Research and Evaluation for Busy Students and Practitioners, both in their second editions. Besides her regular blogs and videos, she also writes comics and fiction. Helen is an Affiliate at Swansea University, a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. In 2021, at the age of 56, she was diagnosed autistic. Her neurodivergence explains her lifelong fascination with, and ability to focus on, words, language and writing.

Richard Phillips is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield. He is a specialist in creative and arts-led research methodologies, which he practises in his own work and encourages students to try in the field trips he leads in cities from Liverpool to New York. Richard’s books include Georges Perec’s Geographies (2019), Fieldwork for Human Geography (2012), Sex, Politics and Empire (1996), and Mapping Men and Empire: A Geography of Adventure (1997).

Helen Kara has been an independent researcher since 1999 and specialises in research methods and ethics. She is the author of Creative Research Methods: A Practical Guide (Policy Press, 2nd ed. 2020) and Research Ethics in the Real World: Euro-Western and Indigenous Perspectives (Policy Press, 2018). Helen is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.