Workshops as an Essential Practice in Doing Biographical Research Cover Image

Workshops as an Essential Practice in Doing Biographical Research
Workshops as an Essential Practice in Doing Biographical Research

Author(s): Kaja Kaźmierska, Joanna Wygnańska
Subject(s): Social Sciences, Methodology and research technology
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
Keywords: workshop; qualitative data analysis; biographical analysis; Grounded Theory

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the paper is to share our reflections on the meaning, goals, and course of analytical workshops, which are treated by the authors not only in terms of methodological procedures, but also as a process of grounded theory building, where the phase of collective work is pivotal. We present the idea of workshops worked out within interpretative sociology and qualitative analysis and developed in different fields, yet we mainly focus on biographical research analysis. The knowledge and practice transfer between scholars in this respect is also one of the frames of our reasoning. The paper consists of several sections: firstly, we present a short overview of workshop practices in the field of biographical research referring mainly to students’ workshops; in the second part, we describe advantages of workshop practices for researchers and their possible outcomes; the third section describes examples of research and analysis of the same empirical material done by researchers representing different methodological approaches; finally, we finish with concluding remarks.

  • Issue Year: XV/2019
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 164-177
  • Page Count: 14
  • Language: English