New frontiers in QLR: definition, design and display

Research that is attentive to temporal processes and durational phenomena is an important tradition within the social sciences internationally with distinct disciplinary trajectories. Qualitative longitudinal research emerged as a distinct methodological paradigm around the turn of the millennium, named within the UK through journal special issues, literature reviews and funding commitments. In 2012-3 the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods funded a network for methodological innovation to map ’New frontiers of QLR’, bringing together a group of scholars who have been actively involved in establishing QLR as a methodological field. The network provided an opportunity to consolidate the learning that has developed in QLR over a sustained period of investment and to engage critically with what QLR might mean in new times. This paper documents the series of discussions staged by the network involving the definition of QLR, the kinds of relationships and practices it involves and the consequences of these in a changing landscape for social research. The series was deliberately interdisciplinary ensuring that we engaged with the temporal perspectives and norms of different academic and practice traditions and this has both enriched and complicated the picture that has emerged from our deliberations. In this paper we argue that QLR is a methodological paradigm that by definition moves with the times, and is an ongoing site of innovation and experiment. Key issues identified for future development in QLR include: intervening in debates of ‘big data’ with visions of deep data that involve following and connecting cases over time; the potential of longitudinal approaches to reframe the ‘sample’ exploring new ways of connecting the particular and the general; new thinking about research ethics that move us beyond anonymity to better explore the meanings of confidentiality and the co-production of research knowledge; and finally the promotion of a QLR sensibility that involves a heightened awareness of the here and now in the making of knowledge, yet which also connects research biographically over a career, enriched by a reflexive understanding of time as a resource in the making of meaning

Knowledge Co-creation in Action: Learning from the Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures Network A methodological sourcebook

The Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures (TESF) network was funded by the UK government's Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and involved partners from India, Rwanda, Somalia/ Somaliland, South Africa, the Netherlands and the UK. The network was initiated in 2019 and officially ended as a funded initiative in 2023. The purpose of TESF was to provide better understanding of how education can be transformed to support sustainable livelihoods, sustainable cities and communities and climate action. Aligned with these concerns in the contexts of India, Rwanda, Somalia/Somaliland, and South Africa, a focus of the network was to tackle intersecting inequalities including those based on gender, socio-economic status, race, class, languages, coloniality, and Indigeneity. Overall, the network funded 67 projects across the four countries of research focus. Underpinning TESF's approach was a methodological commitment to knowledge co-creation. The purpose of this sourcebook is to provide a critical overview of what we have learned as a network from our experiences of applying knowledge co-creation as a transformative practice in economically constrained and highly unequal contexts. Researchers within the network sought to synthesise emerging findings and to generate learning from across the funded projects and diversity of global South contexts, shared in this document. It is in the spirit of sharing these learnings that we frame this as a 'methodological sourcebook' rather than as a more conventional report

Regeneration: restorative theatre practice in theatre education.

Regeneration: Restorative Theatre Practice in Theatre Education aims to harness the holistic benefits of theatre as a discipline and create an intentional restorative practice for performers. This thesis serves as a proposal; an attempt to prioritize restorative and self-care practices within the theatre industry, specifically pre-professional training programs. This proposal takes the form of a curriculum that builds upon the current model of theatre training (Voice, Movement, Acting) with the addition of Regeneration. Regeneration provides theatre artists with specific areas of study to offer the psychosocial support a theatre artist may need during their pre-professional training. This thesis will discuss how Regeneration practices are put into action by performers and how theatre-makers can use Regeneration practices to affect social change

Building Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy through Entrepreneurship Education: Understanding the Pedagogical Designs

The learning activities, educator roles and teaching methods employed in tertiary-level entrepreneurship courses that develop entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) remain unclear. This research discovers that role-transitioning between educator roles enables reflection, enabling greater self-awareness and entrepreneurial awareness, facilitated by curation of ESE sources and catalysts. Based on interviews with 77 course designers in 26 countries, the findings of this research can improve ESE development resulting in more high-efficacious graduate entrepreneurs

Achieving Student Learning Outcomes Through Intentional Orientation Leader Training Curriculum at UC San Diego

Student leadership positions such as Orientation Leaders are constantly evolving to meet the needs of the incoming diverse population of students attending an institution each year, making it essential for professionals within higher education institution to adapt their leadership development curriculum to the students they serve. Leadership development curriculum often neglects the development of group dynamics as an essential part of the learning process, an issue that has been observed in my experience. The purpose of my action research project was to explore my work as the Orientation Graduate Assistant as I assist in creating and facilitating the leadership training curriculum for Orientation Leaders representing Revelle College at the University of California San Diego to ultimately achieve student learning outcomes. I explored the following question in my research: How can I, as the Orientation graduate assistant, develop and facilitate intentional programming within the training curriculum to achieve student learning outcomes? The findings of my research indicate that co-creating and adapting the Orientation Leader training curriculum to meet the needs of each student leader, individually, and collectively as a team, allows student learning and leadership development to flourish; ultimately achieving student learning outcomes

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE POSTINDUSTRIAL: SPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURES FOR STUDYING THE PAST IN THE PRESENT

Postindustrial urban landscapes are large-scale, complex manifestations of the past in the present in the form of industrial ruins and archaeological sites, decaying infrastructure, and adaptive reuse; ongoing processes of postindustrial redevelopment often conspire to conceal the toxic consequences of long-term industrial activity. Understanding these phenomena is an essential step in building a sustainable future; despite this, the study of the postindustrial is still new, and requires interdisciplinary connections that remain either unexplored or underexplored. Archaeologists have begun to turn their attention to the modern industrial era and beyond. This focus carries the potential to deliver new understandings of the industrial and postindustrial city, yet archaeological attention to the postindustrial remains in its infancy. Developments in the ongoing digital revolution in archaeology and within the social sciences and humanities have the potential to contribute to the archaeological study of the postindustrial city. The development of historical GIS and historical spatial data infrastructures (HSDIs) using historical big data have enabled scholars to study the past over large spatial and temporal scales and support qualitative research, while retaining a high level of detail. This dissertation demonstrates how spatial technologies using big data approaches, especially the HSDI, enhance the archaeological study of postindustrial urban landscapes and ultimately contribute to meeting the “grand challenge” of integrating digital approaches into archaeology by coupling reflexive recording of archaeological knowledge production with globally accessible spatial digital data infrastructures. HSDIs show great potential for providing archaeologists working in postindustrial places with a means to curate and manipulate historical data on an industrial or urban scale, and to iteratively contextualize this longitudinal dataset with material culture and other forms of archaeological knowledge. I argue for the use of HSDIs as the basis for transdisciplinary research in postindustrial contexts, as a platform for linking research in the academy to urban decision

Curating the Cinematic Muse: The Role of Programming in the Film Festival Experience - The 40th Toronto International Film Festival

International film festivals are clearly about something beyond the appreciation of cinema; they are forums for the collective exploration and celebration of films, showcasing the newest films, the exotic and forgotten cinematic productions. Within a contemporary context, they represent the ultimate celebration of cinema and films as a collection of creative texts. They engage participants in a celebratory environment that pays homage to film as an artform. The research examines an international film festival with a focus on the role of programming, through the exploration of the understated elements of this multidimensional phenomenon that impacts the festival event. The significance and original contribution of the research is found in its methodological intervention into the burgeoning field of film festival research through a specific investigation of a non-competitive international film festival. The research explores how programming impacts the festival event and the emergent experience. Furthermore, the research is approached from a supply-side perspective with summative insights that provided pathways to conceptualize an international film festival as a field-configuring event, with discourse on the less encompassing areas of organizing, programming and curating the festival event. The conceptual framework positions the research within an interdisciplinary context with theoretical perspectives from institutional theory, field configuring events and film festival studies to offer a broader lens to nuance the gleanings from film festival professionals. The research utilizes the qualitative research strategy of the case study augmented by research methods such as in-depth interviews with participants, textual analysis and secondary research to collect and analyze data to situate this investigation within a contemporary and historical context. The interview gives a distinct focus to the film festival programmers to share perspectives to understand the contexts and settings; how they navigate the programming and the elements that impact the festival event. Textual analysis is used as a corollary to understand and provide meanings from the setting, the related activities, voices and the film festival context. The research is on the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), its diverse programming practices and discursive positioning of films in an inclusive and influential event. The researcher problematizes festival programming to examine the film festival and uncover from festival professionals, their perspectives from an immersive and participatory lens in relation to organizing, programming and curating the festival event that embolden its raison d’etre. The research findings revealed that there are multiple elements to programming an international film festival and curating the festival event and the emergent experience. The participants demonstrated their knowledge and expertise and how as a collective they understood the issues that are significant facets which are central to the film festival’s identity, status and reputation. Additionally, the discourse on the curation of the festival event and the emergent experience revealed characteristics of a field-configuring film festival event through several factors that were primarily connected to the multidimensional nature of the film festival - partnerships, collective sensemaking and information exchange that emerged as plausible and integral aspects both in a local and global context. The overall findings highlighted that there is need for further understanding of film festival as a phenomenon and the multidimensionality of programming; therefore the research suggests additional areas for scholarly investigation that can contribute to our understanding of film festivals and their interconnectedness in relation to our cultures and societies

Now again

Now Again is a participatory performance made up of a series of individual and group activities that create opportunities to notice how we fit and shift in our environment. Reflecting the dance histories of the artists, the variable dynamic possibilities of the city are brought into focus through specific ‘scores’ that, as propositions for engagement, activate simple movement patterns or observations. The aim is to allow responsive noticing of the immediate environment, but also to enliven it in unexpected ways. Individuals who are participants and observers, dedicated or incidental (passers-by), become part of the disclosure of the physical and the social. The rigid structure of the city is re-imagined as a fluid, choreographic entity invested with organic qualities. Performances move between a series of city locations, each with differing activities. Designated ‘nodes’ in the city grid (certain streets, a square, a doorway, footpath, a hole in a wall or a particular tree), have been chosen for their imaginative, affective, or energetic resonances. These are ‘mapped’ by the perambulatory, physical, sensory, and relational engagement of all participants. This is a collective dance created through noticing the feelings and patterns of the physical self in the built, natural, and social environment. In some sites, the artists perform, while in others they lead a participative performance. Ephemeral, self-led, performance experiments designed to disappear into the fabric of the city, will also be invited. A mobile app enables audience participation. The app employs GPS data to trigger information specific to that site (written prompts, sounds and scored provocations)

Navigating the Intersections of Migration and Motherhood in Online Communities: Digital Community Mothering and Migrant Maternal Imaginaries

This thesis explores the experiences of contemporary migrant mothers in Australia, through the lens of their online communities. Facebook groups created by and for migrant mothers from particular national, ethnic or linguistic communities have proliferated in the last decade. The analysis of these groups acts as a springboard to investigate how migrant mothers in Australia experience and respond to migration and motherhood, centring on four key areas: community-building and leadership; friendship and sociality; the emotions of motherhood and migration; and migrant mothers’ maternal practices, narratives and imaginaries.Literature and concepts from three distinct fields – motherhood studies, migration research and digital sociology – inform the research. Understandings of migration are extended and troubled by highlighting the importance of maternal social connection, not simply in relation to their partners and children or to the labour market, but also between mothers. The investigation of the role of migrant maternal Facebook groups in the everyday lives of migrant mothers also extends scholarship in digital sociology by bringing feminist, matricentric (A. O'Reilly 2016) and intersectional approaches into conversation with key themes relating to belonging, mobility and connection.The thesis involved a scoping exercise which mapped Australian online migrant mother’s groups, an online survey of women ‘mothering away from home’ , and semi-structured interviews with 41 migrant mothers from ten different countries living in Sydney and Melbourne, who were members of migrant mothers’ online groups. Fifteen of the interviewees held an administrator role in their group, and the digital and emotional labour involved in managing the groups became a central theme. The migrant maternal narratives elicited across the study demonstrate the role of the digital in managing the ruptures and connections of migrant motherhood. Mothers, as both consumers and producers of digital information and community, are shown to be working to effect settlement and create belonging for themselves and others.This thesis works to bring mothers out from the shadows of migration and digital social research. In order to achieve the task of making migrant mothers visible, new concepts have been introduced, such as ‘digital community mothering’, ‘relational settlement’, ‘affective settlement’ and ‘migrant maternal imagined communities’. The groups are representations of their collective maternal imaginary, as well as mechanisms for forging ‘real’ connections