Agricultural Innovation in the Volta River Basin: An Analysis of Changes in Knowledge, Skills and Livelihoods brought about by the Volta Basin Development Challenge

Main message Farmers in Volta Basin Development Challenge project sites are generally not developing brand new practices on their own. Information about new technologies is slowly spreading from projects to the wider community, but adoption of these technologies could be strengthened by creating an enabling environment. This would mean taking into account the five determinants of adoption identified here and programming accordingly

Mental health and the pandemic: why it is inaccurate to say fathers were largely unaffected

Anna Tarrant and Mary Reader consider qualitative and quantitative findings from recent studies to explore how both mothers and fathers, particularly in low-income families, reported on their mental health during the first lockdown

The re-use of qualitative data is an under-appreciated field for innovation and the creation of new knowledge in the social sciences

The value and potential of data re-use and the associated methodology of qualitative secondary analysis (QSA) is often overlooked. Dr Anna Tarrant and Dr Kahryn Hughes propose, that as COVID-19 limits opportunities for qualitative research for the foreseeable future, now, more than ever the social sciences need to address the under-use of existing qualitative data

Care in an age of austerity: men’s care responsibilities in low-income families

Drawing on data from linked qualitative longitudinal studies, this paper considers the under-researched impacts of economic crisis and austerity on men with care responsibilities in low-income families. Recent debates indicate that recession and austerity provide the conditions for care arrangements in which fathers are more likely to engage in social reproduction, producing ‘caring masculinities’. In an austerity context that is permeating everyday life in the UK and producing significant hardships for citizens, however, care responsibilities are being further entrenched as the private responsibilities of individual families. The ‘responsibilisation’ of care as a result of processes of privatisation and individualisation produces numerous challenges for men that are evidenced in their discussions of their everyday caring practices. With reference to an ethics of care perspective and insights about the particular ways in which men with caring responsibilities are being affected by austerity, it is argued that processes of welfare reform and self-responsibilisation rely on men as individuals to rework their identities to reflect the values of care. The paper concludes that wider structural change and support for men to engage effectively and positively in care are required in order for these identities, and for men’s critical engagement in gender equality, to flourish

Getting out of the swamp? Methodological reflections on using qualitative secondary analysis to develop research design

The possibilities and pitfalls of qualitative secondary analysis (QSA) have been the subject of on-going academic debate, linked to the growing availability of qualitative data in digital archives. This article contributes to, and extends these methodological debates, through a critical consideration of how the secondary analysis of linked qualitative longitudinal datasets might be utilised productively in qualitative research design. It outlines the re-use of two linked datasets from the Timescapes archive, that were analysed to develop a new empirical project exploring processes of continuity and change in the context of men’s care responsibilities in low-income localities. Following brief discussion of the substantive outcomes of the analysis, I conclude by arguing that the pitfalls of qualitative secondary analysis, that are complicated further when working with longitudinal data, effectively supports the development of new empirical research and in honestly reporting the process of ‘getting out of the swamp’, in early research development

Instigating father-inclusive practice interventions with young fathers and multi-agency professionals: the transformative potential of qualitative longitudinal and co-creative methodologies

Interdisciplinary social sciences literature on the value and significance of engaged fatherhood and father-inclusive approaches to practice for enhanced family outcomes have begun to reach a consensus. Yet there has been less attention to how research knowledge about fatherhood, including that which is co-produced with and for fathers, can be more effectively translated and embedded in practice and policy contexts. This article elaborates on a cumulative, empirically driven process that has established new relational ecologies between young fathers, multi-agency professionals and researchers. It illustrates how these ecologies, supported by longitudinal and co-creative research combined, are driving societal transformations through knowledge exchange and the instigation of new father-inclusive practice interventions that address the marginalisation of young fathers. The methodologies, including the co-creation of the Young Dads Collective and its impacts on young fathers and multi-agency professionals, are evaluated, confirming them as powerful and productive mechanisms for embedding father-inclusive practices within existing support and policy systems

COVID-19 COLLABORATIONS: Researching Poverty and Low- Income Family Life during the Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic affected everyone – but, for some, existing social inequalities were exacerbated, and this created a vital need for research. Researchers found themselves operating in a new and difficult context; they needed to act quickly and think collectively to embark on new research despite the constraints of the pandemic. This book presents the collaborative process of 14 research projects working together during COVID-19. It documents their findings and explains how researchers in the voluntary sector and academia responded methodologically, practically, and ethically to researching poverty and everyday life for families on low incomes during the pandemic. This book synthesises the challenges of researching during COVID-19 to improve future policy and practice

Exploring the Influence of Intergenerational Relations on the Construction and Performance of Contemporary Grandfather Identities.

While research on grandparenthood has flourished in recent years, few studies have focused specifically on grandfathers. Existing knowledge is informed by uncritical and dated theoretical approaches or based on gender and generational biased data from women and grandchildren. As a result little is known about how men experience being a grandfather and construct their grandfather identities, or how intergenerational relationships influence this, particularly in the contemporary context. To gain more comprehensive knowledge about the influence of intergenerational relations on grandfather identities, 31 in-depths interviews and two participant observations were undertaken in the Lancaster District, UK, with men who are currently grandfathering. A key finding that emerged from the empirical data is that grandfathers perform a variety of different practices in various spaces and this is influenced by the quality and character of intergenerational relationships with both children and grandchildren. Diversity between the men's personal and familial circumstances influences men's involvement with grandchildren and where they grandfather, and consequently how they perform and construct their identities. This suggests that grandfather identities are multi-faceted, heterogeneous and not easily reducible to existing essentialist conceptions of grandfather identities. This thesis further argues that a synthesis of multiple theories of identity construction adopted by human geographers, including practice, performativity and intergenerationality are required to interpret the empirical data, to generate critical understandings of contemporary grandfather identities and the influence of intergenerational relations on these identities; grandfather identities are analysed as practiced and relational identities. This reveals that in order to understand the nature of men's identities as grandfathers and the ways in which they are produced in practice, the effects of their unique intergenerational relations with both grandchildren and children, and their personal and familial contexts need to be understood

F**k ups in social research: learning from what goes ‘wrong’

What happens when research goes wrong, or at least, is perceived to go wrong? How do researchers manage, or indeed fail to manage, the unexpected, and what new intellectual developments might be made possible through engagement with ‘failures’? Jason Hughes, Anna Tarrant, Kahryn Hughes and Grace Sykes discuss these questions, as part of a forthcoming edited collection, called F**k Ups in Social Research: What to do when Research Goes Wrong. Here they explore the value of failure in research and the importance of crafting a critical and reflexive space for learning when social research doesn’t go to plan

COVID-19 and Young Fathers: Negotiating ‘earning’ and ‘caring’ through the COVID-19 crisis: change and continuities in the parenting and employment trajectories of young fathers

In this briefing paper we explore the earning and caring experiences and trajectories of a cohort of seventeen young fathers. We examine continuities and change in their work and family arrangements, the impacts of these changes on their parenting trajectories and personal relationships, and the extent to which these experiences differ for young fathers who are resident and non-resident. The balance of earning and caring has always been negotiated and shared by parents to varying degrees (Neale and Davies, 2015), but never more rapidly than under the renewed socio-economic conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic and national lockdown. As a secondary effect of the lockdown as a major public health intervention, the pandemic has had significant gendered effects, forcing widespread change and renegotiations in the employment and caring circumstances of both men and women