Tagged / performative social science

Performative Social Science reaching wider audiences

A Chapter on Performative Social Science for the International Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods by BU’s Dr Kip Jones has achieved 1500+ reads on ResearchGate.

Performative Social Science (PSS) is an arts-led method of research and dissemination developed by Jones at Bournemouth University over ten years and is recognised internationally. Recently lauded by Sage Publications, they described PSS as pioneering work that will ‘propel arts-led research forward’ and be a ‘valued resource for students and researchers for years to come’.  

Performative Social Science (PSS) is positioned within the current era of cross-pollination from discipline to discipline. Practitioners from the Arts and Humanities look to the Social Sciences for fresh frameworks, whist Social Science practitioners explore the Arts for potential new tools for enquiry and dissemination.

‘Kip Jones brings the genre of what he calls performative social sciences forward with wide-ranging theoretical, academic, and artistic products in a various media that takes up how social scientists can use art for investigation and dissemination.’ —“Embodied Methodologies, Participation, and the Art of Research” by Madeline Fox  

Dr Kip Jones, Reader in Qualitative Research and Performative Social Science retires from Bournemouth University at the end of February, but will continue with PhD supervision on a part-time basis. He has four potential publications in discussion with publishers, including a volume on PSS. 

CQR Seminar for this Wednesday cancelled

Sorry to inform you that this Wednesday’s ‘In Conversation’ CQR Seminar is cancelled due to illness.

Mark you diaries now, however, for the next Seminar on Wed. 11 April at 1 pm in RLH 208 presented by the ‘Gang of Four’.

Curious?  More information will follow. Stay tuned!

Here are the Seminars for the rest of the academic year:

Two important Chapters on Performative Social Science now available in text books

Kip Jones, a pioneer in Performative Social Science at Bournemouth University (BU), has two substantial book Chapters now available in texts published by Wiley-Blackwell and Palgrave Macmillan. Both texts move the practice of arts-led research forward substantially and will become valued resources for students and researchers for years to come.

The first Chapter, “Performative Social Science”, in J. P. Matthes, C. S. Davis, & R. F. Potter (Eds.), The International Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods, rehearses the development of Performative Social Science (PSS) as a research approach and method, developed over ten years at Bournemouth University through publication, film, research, workshops, Masterclasses, and PhD studies. Jones explains that PSS is not simply ‘art for art’s sake’ instead of research. PSS is research and dissemination practices based in the philosophy of Relational Aesthetics and has much in common with Social Constructionism. The ‘audience’ or reader/viewer are key to PSS, as is the wider community.

This 3-volume Encyclopedia is touted as the most current authoritative single-source reference on communication methods. The editors state that they have invited the best scholars from all over the world to accomplish this. Jones’ Chapter (draft) is now available at: https://www.academia.edu/22126458/Performative_Social_Science

 

The second Chapter, “Emotivity and Ephemera Research”, in Innovative Research Methodologies in Management: Volume I, edited by L. Moutinho and M. Sokelem provides an in-depth worked example of PSS. The Chapter reports on a two-day experimental workshop in arts-led interviewing technique using ephemera to illicit life stories and then reporting narrative accounts back using creative means of presentation. The workshop took place at Bournemouth and participants were all University faculty members. A key to the process was in replicating what research participants may be feeling and going through when they share very personal stories with researchers. The exercise built a respect for this process by acknowledging that fact through the personal experiences and emotive connectivity of workshop participants.

The Editors of this book on management were keen to include the Chapter, stating that many who are attempting a PhD, particularly using a qualitative approach, spend little or no effort in finding, then learning, an appropriate method for their research question. The felt that the Chapter would contribute substantially in this way to management studies. The Chapter was originally published as “A report on an arts-led, emotive experiment in interviewing and storytelling” in The Qualitative Report, 20(2), 86-92 and is available here: https://www.academia.edu/10835482/A_Report_on_an_Arts-Led_Emotive_Experiment_in_Interviewing_and_Storytelling

It is examples like these that substantiate the work being done not only by Jones, but by other members of the Centre for Qualitative Research (CQR) at Bournemouth University. Membership of CQR comes from across Health and Social Sciences’ disciplines at BU as well as from a number of other BU faculties, This attraction attests to the universal appeal of qualitative methods and particularly arts-led ones, including Performative Social Science, which are being developed through CQR.

Handbook of Arts-based Research

Pleased to announce that a copy of the Handbook of Arts-based Research, Patricia Leavy, Editor, is now available at Bournemouth University’s Lansdowne Library, but also available electronically online.  The compendium includes a Chapter, “Research as Film, Film as Research” by FMC’s Trevor Hearing and FHSS’ Kip Jones.

Bringing together interdisciplinary leaders in methodology and arts-based research (ABR), this comprehensive handbook explores the synergies between artistic and research practices and addresses issues in designing, implementing, evaluating, and publishing ABR studies.
This is a welcome addition for faculty and students with an interest in the use of the arts in research and/or dissemination.

“Using photo-elicitation to generate storytelling”

Join us next Wed for “Using photo-elicitation to generate storytelling” presented by Anne Quinney.

 

Anne’s co-presenter, Maggie Hutchings, is now able to join her for the conversation!

Lots of opportunity for audience participation in listening, making, and sharing. Not lectures, the seminar is ‘In Conversation” about a topic or method. No PPT and plenty of time for audience interaction and feedback!

Wednesday, 1 Nov.

Royal London House 208 1 pm

Students and Faculty welcome!

Presented by the Centre for Qualitative Research

Centre for Qualitative Research ‘In Conversation” this Wed 1 pm Fenge & Jones

Not to be missed!

This Wednesday at 1 pm in RLH 201

Lee-Ann Fenge and Kip Jones converse about a focus group that became an innovative journal article, and now about to become a short ‘script in hand’ performance by YOU the audience!

“I’m her partner. Let me in!”

All BU staff and students welcome! 

See you there!

See all of the ‘In Conversation’ CQR Seminars listed here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Chapter on “Film as Research/ Research as Film” from Hearing and Jones

Pleased to announce a ground-breaking Chapter on the use of film in research from FMC’s Trevor Hearing and FHSS’ Kip Jones in Guilford Publications’ Handbook of Arts-Based Research edited by Patricia Leavy.

Chapter 22, “Film as Research/Research as Film,” is a spirited dialogue between Trevor Hearing and Kip Jones about film as a performative research practice and means of disseminating research. Hearing comes to the conversation with a background in documentary film-making for television, while Jones is a qualitative researcher who has turned biographic research data into the story for an award-winning short film, RUFUS STONE. The authors collaborated on the trailer for that film, as well as documenting its production on video.

Hearing and Jones have worked together for over a decade on several projects and presentations, which offers a starting point for their conversation about the power and potential of film for researchers.

Ground-breaking article by Jones and Fenge

Kip Jones and Lee-Ann Fenge are pleased to announce that our article to appear shortly in Creative Approaches to Research, a peer-reviewed open-access journal, “Gift Stories How Do We Retell the Stories that Research Participants Give Us?” is now available on BRIAN.

We passionately believe that as narrative researchers and storytellers we must promote narrative in the content and styles of our publications. To revert to a style of publication or presentation that is counter to this does a disservice to our commitments as narrativists.

We can no longer afford to ignore the great advances made in representation of qualitative data. These have been overwhelmingly demonstrated by the successes achieved in auto-ethnography, poetic enquiry, ethno-drama, film, Performative Social Science and/or other arts-based efforts in research and dissemination.

 

Three tales of sexual intrigue from Kip Jones

C4nQP3CXUAAICo9 ‘True confessions: Why I left a traditional liberal arts college for the sins of the Big City’ by Kip Jones has been published today in Qualitative Research Journal (QRJ)

Three tales of sexual intrigue from Kip Jones.  A story, a reminiscence, and a scene from a film.

By means of several auto-ethnographic stories (including a scene from a working script for a proposed film), the author interrogates numerous ideas and misconceptions about gay youth, both past and present. 

Being straight or being gay can be viewed within the wider culture’s need to set up a sexual binary and force sexual “choice” decision-making for the benefit of the majority culture. Through the device of the fleeting moment, this essay hopes to interrogate the certainties and uncertainties of the “norms” of modernity by portraying sexuality in youth.

Also available as a draft on Academia.edu

Chapter on Ethics in Film by Kip Jones published by Routledge

Written by leading international scholars from the main contributing perspectives and disciplines, The Routledge International Handbook on Narrative and Life History seeks to capture the range and scope as well as the considerable complexity of the field of narrative study and life history work by situating these fields of study within the historical and contemporary context.

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Relishing the chance to cite not only C.E. Scott from The Question of Ethics Nietzsche, Foucault, Heidegger, but also Norma Desmond from Sunset Strip, Jones said, “The Handbook was a welcomed chance, once and for all, to sort the subtleties of ethical considerations in arts-based research approaches such as film”.  Jones is joined in the Handbook‘s discussion on Ethics  by such luminaries as Arthur Frank, Laurel Richardson, Caroline Ellis, and Norman Denzin.

Jones’ Chapter is available now on Brian and Academia.edu and the Handbook will shortly be in the BU Libraries.

 

CQR Members Delight Norwegian Visitors—“a very memorable experience”

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Norwegian visitors and CQR Members share results of arts-based research efforts at HSS. (Photos: Anne Quinney)

Five Members of BU’s Centre for Qualitative Research (Lee-Ann Fenge; Caroline Ellis-Hill; Maggie Hutchings; Michele Board; Anne Quinney) wowed recent visitors to FHSS from Sogn og Jordane University College in Norway. The College is based in the Sogn og Fjordane University College (Førde, Norway) which is currently situated on two campuses in Forde and Songdal on the west of Norway and on the longest and deepest Fjord in the world.

Each CQR member took a turn in presenting a short and sharp ten-minute demonstration by means of sharing the outputs of an arts-based qualitative project. These included:

  1. Ephemera workshop—sharing life stories via personal objects
  2. Seen but Seldom Heard –short video screening of a poetry project with disabled youth
  3. HeART of Stroke Project—sharing of a painting project for Stroke patients
  4. Meaning of Home photo project – sharing of photo book of baby boomers’ recollections of home
  5. Methods to Diversity—sharing and distribution of Method Deck of cards to encourage LGBT and ageing awareness
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Various arts-based projects shared with Norwegian visitors. (Photos: Anne Quinney)

A screening of the award-winning, research-based short film, RUFUS STONE, then followed the five short presentations. The visiting scholars remarked that they were very moved by the film. Overall, they appreciated the nuances in the use of arts-based approaches to create as well as disseminate research projects.

CQR is known internationally as a hub of excellence in Performative Social Science, a theoretically based approach to using tools from the arts and humanities in researching and/or disseminating a wide variety of health and social science topics.

One team member remarked, “On reflection, many of the messages from the six presentations overlapped, and so we created a very coherent and deep forum by means of hands-on sharing of objects”.

Another said, “There was a real buzz in the room and the event proved a great showcase for focusing on the strengths, power, magic, beauty, depth, richness of the many and varied CQR activities”.

Elizabeth Rosser, HSS’ Deputy Dean for Education and Professional Practice, who organised the three day visit to BU, summed up the Norwegians’ response: “They were MOST impressed and felt they gained considerably from the meeting with the Centre for Qualitative Research members”.

Visitors from Norway:

  1. Dr Anne-Grethe Halding: Associate Professor, Head of Department of Health Studies
  2. Professor Maj-Britt Raholm: Professor of Nursing
  3. Dr Anne Marie Sandvoll: Head of Postgraduate Education, Faculty of Health Studies
  4. Dr Aud Marie Øien: Research lead, Faculty of Health Studies
  5. Dr Eli Natvik: Early Career researcher and academic recently commenced at the University College from clinical practice as a physiotherapist.

Stay in touch with CQR on:

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/54608373386/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BUQualitative

CQR website: https://research.bournemouth.ac.uk/centre/centre-for-qualitative-research/

 

Creative Writing for Academics with Kip Jones

Creative writing

Summary: The Creative Writing workshop will be a unique event in that it will not be a typical ‘writing retreat’ (with trees to hug and lots of time to ruminate), but rather a very active experience with lots of exercises, suggestions and supportive feedback on participants’ work from Kip Jones and other participants.  The point is to encourage both students and academics who would like to include more creative writing in their outputs, particularly those whose writing includes reporting on narrative and other qualitative methods of research.  It also helps immensely in the move to publishing in the wider world of blogs and online outlets, moving work to media and film, auto-ethnography and even fiction.

Justification: The important point of Creative Writing for Academics is to help academics and students achieve the goal of achieving more of their work read by wider audiences; in other words, impact. By providing an intense two-day experience for participants to engage in developing writing skills, the playing field is levelled and opportunities for facilitated learning developed. By engaging in creative writing, it becomes possible for all to write more clearly, more simply, even more creatively, when writing not only for academic publications, but also for outlets previously unimagined.

Methods: The workshop will present opportunities to work with academic material and expand its means of production and dissemination to new and creative levels through interfaces with techniques from the arts and humanities, including blog and magazine writing, film treatments and scripts, and poetry and fictional exercises. These intellectual exchanges encourage joint exploration of how researchers can engage with principles and tools from the arts in order to expand and extend the possibilities of dissemination of research data. Concepts of creativity itself will evolve and be transformed by participants’ outlooks and willingness to engage with unfamiliar territory. These processes comprise a ‘facilitated learning’—in that knowledge will be gained as a secondary goal through a process of developing new relationships through small group problem-solving and self examination, grounded in personal past experience and knowledge.

12115534_10153710964944855_4944742169117744163_nKip Jones BA MSc PhD is Reader in Performative Social Science and Qualitative Research in the Faculties of Media & Communication and Health & Social Sciences at Bournemouth University. Jones has produced films, videos and audio productions and has written many articles for academic journals and authored Chapters in books on topics such as masculinity, ageing and rurality, and older LGBT citizens. His groundbreaking use of qualitative methods, including biography and auto-ethnography, and the use of tools from the arts in social science research and dissemination, are distinguished internationally.

Workshop Price: £120. for two days. £90. for students/BU staff

Academics and students at all levels welcome!

Register online at: 

http://creative-writing-workshop.eventbrite.co.uk

“Styles of Good Sense” Ethics, Filmmaking and Scholarship

Crew shooting early scene for the short, research-based film, RUFUS STONE

Crew shooting early scene for the short, research-based film, RUFUS STONE

Kip Jones’ draft Chapter for The Routledge International Handbook on Narrative and Life History was deposited today on BRIAN and Academia.edu. The book’s section on Ethics is edited by Ivor Goodson, with assistance from Ari Antikainen, Molly Andrews and Pat Sikes. Jones’ Chapter entitled, “Styles of Good Sense—Ethics, Filmmaking and Scholarship” is based upon his experience as researcher, author and producer of the award winning short film, RUFUS STONE.

Jones proposes that aesthetics and ethics need to be considered in concert and that they are at the very heart of arts-based research. Ethics and Aesthetics become intertwined and support one another. Jones states:

‘Ethics, much like aesthetics, is often misunderstood as something effusive, illusive and somehow, decision-making by the few on a rarefied echelon, involving pronouncements of grand moral impact and/or sophisticated discrimination. For these kinds of reasons and to avoid potential headaches, it is often assumed that checklists and committees will be far better at making such decisions than mere individuals.’

Jones believes that ethics and aesthetics need to remain the prerogative of the researcher/filmmaker and her/his participants and audiences. By developing a trust in instinct and intuition and the naturally expressive and moral potential of our personal resources, research involving people’s stories can become richer and more human, if we only are willing to jettison some of the baggage of the old academic rigor and dry procedural ethics.

Jones’ involvement in the section of the book on Ethics will include co-contributors Arthur Frank, Norm Denzin, Laurel Richardson and Carolyn Ellis, and will be published in the New Year.

 

 

RUFUS STONE shortlisted for AHRC Research in Film Award

Kip Rufus location

The research-based biopic RUFUS STONE has just been shortlisted for the AHRC Research in Film Anniversary Prize for best AHRC funded film since 1998.

A central strand of the activities taking place throughout 2015 to mark the AHRC’s tenth anniversary, the awards attracted nearly 200 entries across the five categories.

The awards are designed to recognise the creative and innovative work being undertaken at the interface between research and film by world-leading researchers, practitioners and filmmakers in the UK arts and humanities research community.

RUFUS STONE was based on three years of research on older LGBT citizens living in south west England and Wales. The research team was led by Kip Jones and included Lee-Ann Fenge and Rosie Read on the team.

Bournemouth’s Kip Jones acted as Author and Executive Producer, with Josh Appignanesi directing the film. RUFUS STONE was produced by Parkville Pictures, London.

More information on the research and film-making

Watch the film here.

“A Breath of Fresh AiR”

The Bournemouth University ARTS in Research Collaborative (AiR) held a two-day workshop in late summer to experiment with interviewing, narrative and ephemera, and arts-based representations of such approaches (reported here previously). An article available online from today in The Qualitative Report by Kip Jones entitled, “A Report on an Arts-led, Emotive Experiment in Interviewing and Storytelling” details the thinking behind this effort and the mechanisms put in place that contributed to the workshop’s success.

The paper reports on the two-day experimental workshop in arts‐led interviewing technique using ephemera to elicit life stories and then reporting narrative accounts back using creative means of presentation.

 Academics and students from across Departments at Bournemouth University told each other stories from their pasts based in objects that they presented to each other as gifts. Each partner then reported the shared story to the group using arts‐led presentation methods.

Narrative research and the qualitative interview are discussed. The conclusion is drawn that academics yearn to express the more emotive connections generated by listening to the stories of strangers.

The procedures followed for the two‐day workshop are outlined in order that other academics may also organize their own experiments in eliciting story using personal objects and retelling stories creatively.

Because the group wanted to take the impact of this experience further, AiR applied and was accepted to present the concept at the Social Research Association’s workshop ‘Creative Research Methods’ on 8 May at the British Library in London. The Collaborative is about to meet up to brainstorm ways in which to translate their experiences of the workshop into a more presentational one.

Anyone from across Departments, whether lecturer, researcher, student or faculty, is welcome to join the ARTS in Research Collaborative. Please contact Kip Jones if you are interested in joining or just want to know more about the Collaborative.

 This just in from Creative Quarter!

Ten ‘rules’ for being creative in producing research

Sage Publishes Kip Jones’ Ten ‘Rules’ for Being Creative in Producing Research

Sage Publications online presence, “Social Science Space” has published BU Kip Jones’ “Ten ‘Rules’ for Being Creative in Producing Research’ on its website.

Since the changing of the year seems to be the time for lists, top ten lists, etc., Jones decided to compile his about being creative whist producing cutting‐edge research. Jones warned, “Not for the faint‐hearted!” The list is available here.

Students and Academics with further interest in arts-based research and dissemination are welcome to join the Arts in Research (AiR) Collaborative. More information here.