Karen O'Reilly is Professor of Sociology at Loughborough University. She has taught ethnographic and qualitative methods for many years in many countries. She has spent 20 years on and off living amongst and learning from British people who move abroad in search of a better way of life. Sociologically this has informed an interest in (and many writings on) a broad range of themes, including: ethnicity, identity and community; nations and nationalism; home and belonging; social exclusion; the informal economy; tourism-related migration; and friends and networks. Her main interests remain in the fields of contemporary forms of mobility and their implications for sociological problems, and ethnographic methods. She is author of Ethnographic Methods (Routledge, 2nd ed. 2012); Key Concepts in Ethnography (Sage, 2009); and International Migration and Social Theory (Palgrave, 2012). [Karen O'Reilly's web page]
Ethnography is an increasingly popular style of research, employed in both long-term and short-term studies in creative ways across the social sciences. This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the technical, practical and philosophical issues that arise when employing traditional and innovative ethnographic methods. Ethnographers typically immerse themselves in a setting for a period of time, listen, ask questions; and supplement observation with the analysis of interview data, documents, and visual and digital data. Such an intrusion into the social setting presents a challenge to the 'received view of science' but ethnographic methods have proven, over time, to provide valid, valuable and rich contextual data with which to understand complex social issues. This course addresses practical and theoretical issues through the following topics: the history of participant observation and contemporary applications; hypotheses and grounded theory; accessing the field; writing fieldnotes; making sense of observational data and telling credible stories; multi-sited, virtual, visual and sensory ethnography; reflexivity and the emotions in fieldwork.
The course is practical, encouraging participants to relate topics to their own research interests and to carry out and begin to analyse micro-observational studies.
Course objectives: By the end of the course participants should: Be able to make close, theory-oriented observations through participation, observation, and conversation. Be equipped to record and analyse the data produced through diverse methods. Take a critical and creative approach to ethnographic methods and understand how they can be combined with other methods of data collection for a range of social, political and policy research areas. Be in a position to defend the validity and reliability of ethnographic interpretations.
Course Prerequisites: The course is introductory but intensive, rapidly taking participants from a beginner's to an advanced level. Some prior familiarity with qualitative methods and a background knowledge of philosophy of social science is required. Participants should be aware that the practical decisions to be made when conducting ethnographic research are necessarily theoretically-informed and will vary with each practitioner's orientation. The course aims to equip participants with the knowledge required to make those decisions for themselves in practice.
Karen invites participants to contact her before the start of the course so that, as far as possible, the course can be tailored to your needs.