Visual and Sensory Approaches to Research
Description
The starting point in the Visual and Sensory Approaches to Research Cluster is that social scientists sometimes place too much significance on talk and text in their explorations of the social, and are not sufficiently attuned to the visual and other sensory inflections of everyday life. And at times, explanations and critiques of the social world get in the way of grasping its sensuous and affective qualities.
Sociologists, criminologists and urban scholars in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research (SSPSSR) make use of visual, aural, material, genealogical, performative, and sensory methods embedded in ethnographic sensibilities across their research and teaching. They undertake digital media-making through crafting images and sounds from lived experience – the sonic, tactile, haptic, and sensorial dimensions of object, place, and/or animal experience; and further developing methodologies of curating audio-visual experiences is an important dimension of the research and teaching of the School. The Cluster uses historical visual and other materials to explore meaning and identity across different spheres of life. And it makes use of the visual and material in combination with talk-based methods to analyse the sensory dimensions of lived experience both through and beyond language. In addition, it critically analyses how images and visual cultures work in the social world.
As well as offering new means of engaging in data collection and analysis, visual and sensory approaches along with the current proliferation of digital technologies create new opportunities for researchers to go beyond spoken and printed words to communicate and disseminate their research findings. In SSPSSR, researchers do this in particular through film, video and photography.
Offers funding
No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.
Contact details
The Registry
Canterbury
CT2 7NZ
United Kingdom
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University affiliation(s)
University of Kent
Canterbury
Last modified:
2023-09-20 15:00:35