PROFRES Spring PhD Symposium 2024

Keynote: Alfred Sköld

The greatest sin of modern philosophy, George Bataille argues in Eroticism, is to have “distanced itself from life itself”. In this lecture, I will argue that the social- and humanistic sciences have moved in the same direction, and that the prime reason for this unfortunate development is an exaggerated focus on method. Method, that was supposed to be the way to the goal, has become the sine qua non of many research projects. Many young scholars spend their valuable time worrying about methodological details instead of doing what they are supposed to: learning, reading, listening, thinking, and writing. Reminded of Heidegger’s concept of “the oblivion of being” (Selnsuergessenheit), we seem to have forgotten what research was all about: life in its endless complexity.

As a defiant response to the slavish adherence to methods that Kerry Chamberlain have termed “methodolatry”, this lecture will be inspired by the qualitative tradition from Steinar Kvale (1938-2008) and Svend Brinkmann (1975-). In different yet related ways Kvale and Brinkmann develop a restless, passionate, and straightforward way of approaching the world where good and interesting research is a question of being 1) genuinely interested in one’s subject matter, 2) theoretically informed, 3) in tune with one’s personal and socio-cultural surroundings, and 4) prepared to learn through experience. In this lecture, I will discuss how the craft of qualitative research might be conceived of in this light and pose a number of questions that could serve as provocation and inspiration for PhD students.

BIO

Dr Alfred Sköld is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Aalborg University, Denmark, and currently a Research Fellow at the International Psychoanalytic University, Berlin. His PhD-dissertation, Relationality and Finitude: A Social Ontology of Grief (2021) focused on the existential and ethical aspects of grief, and his current research project investigates the role of emotions in youth climate activism. Sköld is the editor of two anthologies in Danish: The Struggle for Happiness (2020) with Svend Brinkmann, and The Register of Love (2023). He has previously been a visiting researcher at Södertörn University and Yale University. Sköld is also the Director of the research group Qualitative Studies at Aalborg University, and the chairperson of Kvale-konferencen (The Kvale Conference).

Respondent: Linda Lundgaard Andersen

Linda Lundgaard Andersen, PhD, is Professor of learning, evaluation and social innovation at Roskilde University, former PhD School of People and Technology director, founder and prior co-director of the Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. She has supervised around 30 PhD students within a broad area of topics. Research interests include learning, social sustainability and social innovation in welfare services, democracy and forms of governance in human services, psycho-societal theory and method, ethnographies of the public sector, social entrepreneurship and social economy, voluntary organizations and social enterprises. Recently, she has been researching transformations and shifts of paradigms in the Danish and Scandinavian welfare services, focusing on a renewed discourse and practice of cocreation, coproduction and partnership in social work and human services. She is also a trained psychoanalytic psychotherapist from Nordic Psychoanalytic Collegium, DK. Linda Lundgaard Andersen is a Scientific Advisory Board member for PROFRES.

Keynote: Katrin Niglas

The use of mixed methods (MM) designs has gained immense popularity in recent decades. In the SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design, Pinto (2012, p. 813) claims that “Most study designs today need to include both quantitative (QN) and qualitative (QL) methods for gathering effective data and can thereby incorporate a more expansive set of assumptions and a broader worldview.” While I am somewhat more modest about the prevalence of MM designs, it is both exciting and challenging to navigate the variability and plethora of approaches the methodologists and practicing researchers from different continents and disciplines are bringing to the field. Building innovations on systematic and representative foundations helps to form a solid bridge to the future. Therefore, the aim of this keynote is to provide an overview of some influential historical developments and a glimpse from these grounds into the possible future trends related to MM designs.

BIO

Katrin Niglas is Professor of Data Analysis at Tallinn University, Estonia. Niglas began her academic work in the speciality of informatics and computing. Having a strong background in the exact sciences and, at the same time, competence in education and psychology, she subsequently specialised in the field of statistics and data analysis. Within the framework of doctoral thesis, she has concentrated on the issues of research methodology, setting the focus on the topic of the combined use of qualitative and quantitative methods. Niglas is a founding member of the researchers’ association Mixed Methods International Research Association and a member of the editorial boards of three high-level international research journals. She has participated in multiple research projects in different fields of social and educational sciences as an expert in methodology and data analysis.

Respondent: Chris Green

Chris Green is Professor of Education and the Director of Education in the School of Health and Social Care (HSC) at the University of Essex, leading a range curriculum design and quality assurance projects. Chris has previously held leadership roles in Practice Partnerships, Medical and Clinical Education and Interprofessional Education. He undertakes and supports systematic reviews of health professions education and is Associate Editor for the Journal of Interprofessional Care and is a Scientific Advisory Board member for PROFRES. Chris’ research interests include interprofessional education, critical theory and its use in health professions education and practice; his methodological interests span qualitative forms of enquiry, specifically grounded theory and critical discourse.

Keynote: Jonna Lappainen

Science is driven by the desire for new knowledge or new discoveries. This also applies to the individual researcher; ideally a researcher is driven by a desire for new knowledge. But researching, doing science, also entails the commitment to be able to demonstrate how you have arrived at your results. An important part of demonstrating of approach is the scientific method. Method is the means for the researcher to achieve results. And sometimes the method is presented as the very demarcation between science and opinion. Evan if this were true, it is important to consider the difference between science and method. Can too strong a focus on method lead to the suppression of the scientific desire at the expense of a desire to be methodologically rigorous and correct? 

By starting from my own field of research, the theory of practical knowledge, I thematize some of the balances and decisions that individual researchers must make in their use of methods. 

BIO

Jonna Lappalainen is an Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer at the Center for Practical Knowledge, Södertörn University Stockholm, Sweden. She wrote her doctoral thesis in philosophy on Søren Kierkegaards understanding of "the single individual". Lappalainen participates in an ongoing research project on collective practical knowledge. The project combines philosophical investigations of the concept of "collective phronesis" with a study of how professionals in the education system and the police force in Sweden and Germany – understand and relate to this very concept. In recent years she has conducted research on the role of thinking in higher education and how it has changed over the last 20 years of transformations in the education system.

Keynote: Geir Afdal

The theme of the talk is the relationship between method and theory in empirical research. The argument is that the relationship can be understood as more distant on one hand and as more entwined on the other, and that the different understandings offer affordances and constraints. The talk has three parts. First, a short discussion on the concepts method and theory, followed by a presentation of examples of distant and entwined positions. In the third and last part, these positions are critically discussed.

BIO

Geir Afdal is Professor of Education at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, Norway. He was director of the research school Religion Values and Society (RVS). He has broad academic interests, including how values and knowledge in education may be understood on the background of processes of difference and globalization, both empirically and theoretically, thereby contributing to the understanding of tolerance in education. Afdal’s research interests also include the relation between theory, practice and research, education and values, religious education, participative action research, the understanding of context, learning and knowledge-creation and the relationship between accountability policies and professional values. Geir Afdal is a member of PROFRES 2.0 Scientific Advisory Board.

Keynote: Ali Roy

This session draws on a new Handbook of Creative Data Analysis to be published by Policy Press in May 2024. The handbook includes a vast range of innovations and creative approaches to working with data, which are in some cases entirely novel and in other cases inventive adaptations of existing practices. Creative data analysis refers to both ‘the analysis of data gathered using creative methods’ and the creative analysis of data gathered using creative or conventional methods. Data analysis has been described as the most complex and mysterious of all of the phases of research and one that receives the least thoughtful discussion in the literature. As editors, we realised that many people were looking for usable examples of doing data analysis differently; for practical resources which they can pick up and apply; and for texts that can describe, simply, how creative approaches have been undertaken and to what effect epistemologically, methodologically, and substantively. The session will consider some of the difficulties and as well as the benefits of using creative approaches to data analysis.

BIO

Ali Roy is Professor of Social Research and Co-Director of the Centre for Children and Young People’s Participation and the Psychosocial Research Unit at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK. Before becoming an academic he was youth and community worker and residential social worker. He is an inter-disciplinary scholar and he has a particular interest in research methodology. Roy has worked on innovations in mobile, visual, map-making, narrative and participatory methods. He has undertaken applied research in the fields of substance use, mental health, youth homelessness, youth violence as well as in collaborative arts.