Due to another commitment this event had to be cancelled – sorry!

Date: 9 June 2015

Time: 12.00-13.00 (extended walk till 2pm optional)

Depart 12:10

MEET: Bowland North Quad (nearer the spine)

Route: (Accessible route) Around Campus

Running Late and Missed the Group?
If you have an iPhone try and track us down using CoMob Net app with group name “walking seminar” https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/comob-net/id326303438?mt=8

Less technical – follow or intercept us!
We’ll be heading north up past LICA, down the linking road toward the duck pond, around the pond and bowling green then across the path between sports centre and sports pitches, then looping around Alex park.  the fitness trail,

About this walking seminar:

THE WALKING SEMINAR IS A MONTHLY WALK  DURING WHICH WE TALK-WALK ABOUT VARIOUS ISSUES CONCERNING ACADEMIC WORK. THE IDEA IS THAT TALKING-WHILE-WALKING ENHANCES THINKING IN WAYS NOT ATTAINABLE BEHIND A DESK OR IN A SEMINAR SITTING DOWN.

Discussion topic: Anecdotes

 

“Merely anecdotal” is often a put down of research – but what place do anecdotes have?

Taking Mike Michael’s chapter as an inspiration we’ll be thinking about:

• How could/would or have you used anecdotes in your writing and or presenting?
  • When do they work?
  • Have they ever been dismissed?
• What makes a “good” anecdote?
• What makes something “merely anecdotal”
• How much “data” does it take to make “an anecdote”?
• How many “anecdotes” does it take to become “data”?

To quote Mike Michael (2012)

the focus will be less on anecdotes as particular components of social phenomena, and more upon their broader, and hopefully deeper, ramifications for methodology. On this score, anecdotes also become a topic of enquiry. The question becomes: How might we push the anecdote as form and process so that it adds something new (or at least new-ish) to the conduct of research – to the gathering, identifying, marshalling, ordering or making of “the happening of the social” (p.26)

Recommended reading:

Michael, M. (2012). Anecdote. In C. Lury & N. Wakeford (Eds.), Inventive methods the happening of the social (pp. 25-35). London: Routledge.

http://ezproxy.lancs.ac.uk/login?url=http://lib.myilibrary.com/Open.aspx?id=371761

 

TERRAIN/FOOOTWEAR: Accessible route – tarmac

How to start? Small it seems!

The first walking semianr was sunny, with a walk around the woodland trail. Ibrar Bhatt joined from the beginning, Mary Hamilton tracked us downvia mobile phone calls but a lesson was learned: a slightly later departure would have brought Andy Yuille along too.

The walk – in words and pictures:

The woodland trail is a really pleasant walk, though often dominated by traffic noise from the M6 or A6. However the corner of campus these pictures are taken from by the brook ar perhaps the most pleasant.

 

Location marker (via ATLAS.ti App – the same marker for both)

Pictures by Mary:

Location marker

Location marker

Conversational topics -how do we like to start?

The discussion topic was “how to start” – a paper, a presentation or another “output”.

There was a lot of consensus about starting with data – kicking off with a vignette (as say Etienne Wenger does so well in “Communities of Practice“). Bringing people straight in to the data and its richness and then working “back” from that was certainly the popular approach in our work and we felt helped to intrigue and entangle the reader immediately and lead them through to a solution. One question posed was: Could this be applied to quantitative approaches though? Could you start with data and tables – or is it restricted to a qualitative “thick description”.

A surprising level of consensus or shared values in a small group? Or perhaps a new standard to supplant the lit review – probelm – results – discussion – conclusion “standard” format?

 

Walking and talking makes such explorations different and mobilisies thinking. Onwards and upwards with the next one.