About this Event
You are cordially invited to a forthcoming workshop organised by London Metropolitan University’s Interdisciplinary Research Forum (IRF), Global Diversities and Inequalities Research Centre and Centre for Life Writing and Oral History:
Understanding the experiences of time is essential when conducting social research. Time pervades everything we do, including our practice as researchers.
In this interdisciplinary workshop, we will examine the relationship between time and social research, focusing on aspects such as the passages of time for research participants, their timelines and transitions. We will address longitudinal research methods and recursive interviews in qualitative research. We will discuss the temporality, rhythms, and pace of research practice itself. We will also address time as a philosophical category, and explore how clock time is used to control and regulate people’s lives in modern societies.
Speakers and abstracts:
Prof Louise Ryan (Sociology): 'About time': using qualitative longitudinal interviews to make sense of temporal and spatial dynamics
I have been using qualitative longitudinal methods, including follow-up interviewing, for almost 2 decades to keep in touch with research participants and understand how their lives and relationships change over time. In migration research, in particular, migrants are often interviewed only once and then entire theses built upon their experiences at that one point in time. Although not without its practical challenges, follow-up research gives some insights into how migrants' lives can change quite dramatically over time. This is especially pertinent in contexts of wider geo-political changes with implications for migration status (such as Brexit or forced displacement). Nonetheless, even 2 or 3 repeat interviews cannot capture the complexities of change over time. This paper draws on my research experience and my recent book (Ryan, 2023) to explore how we can address the challenges of researching temporal and spatial dynamics.
Prof Svetlana Stephenson: (Sociology): Beyond the gang. Time and memory in the life of a Russian ex-gangster
The past is a terrain that is changed as people remember it and make sense of it. In this paper I present the analysis of two biographical narratives by Tzigan, an ex-gangster from the Russian city of Kazan. By using recursive interviews, I show how his account of the time in the gang has dramatically changed between the first and the second interviews, as he looked retrospectively on his former self from the vantage point of his current law-abiding life. Using Bakhtin’s (1938) concept of chronotope, I show how the exciting "time in Gangland" narrative presented in the first interview turned into the story of "adventure of ordeal" in the second one, as he reassessed his identity and his ethical position.
Prof Jenny Harding (Media and Culture): Temporalities in oral history research
This paper explores different temporalities in oral history research. It draws on recent interviews with oral historians (PhD students, ECRs, established researchers, volunteer interviewers), who reflected on their experience of time in relation to interview encounters, research processes, institutional contexts, working conditions and hopes for future employment. The paper explores the differing rhythms, and associated affects, of deceleration and acceleration across the terrain of oral history research
Dr Wendy Ross (Psychology): Latency to solution: The fluid nature of time on task in cognitive psychology
Steffensen and Vallée-Tourangeau (2018) call problem-solving psychology “the psychology of the suspended next”. Whether in the laboratory or out of it, a human agent confronted with a problem no longer knows what to do next. What occurs during this “suspended next” is of great interest to those who are interested in human reasoning because not knowing what to do next requires effortful thinking to resolve the situation. A traditional view of cognition psychology draws (either consciously or otherwise) from a basis of methodological solipsism (Fodor 1980) – that is, cognition is seen as a cold activity which can be fundamentally disconnected from the surrounding world. On this view, the time spent on a task in this moment of suspended next is function of cognitive effort and the complexity of the required internal processing. However, increasing attention is being paid to alternative perspectives on thinking which cast cognition more as an interactive process between human agent and the environment. On this ecological view, latency to task solution should be seen as a function of more than simply task complexity. Drawing on evidence from a series of experimental and observational studies, I shall make the case that latency to solution is as much a function of environmental affordances (both social and material) as cognitive effort, and make the stronger claim that this means that greater attention needs to be paid both to the activities take place in that time and the role of the socio-material world in structuring those.
Dr Craig Lundy (Social and Political Thought): Decommissioned futures: climate change and social life after progress
The visions and expectations that people have about the future are often only made fully apparent when they are threatened or disappear. This is especially the case when it comes to the modern mantra of ‘progress’ – a doctrine that serves as a presupposed norm for many, not only when it is realised but also, if not more so, when it is painfully absent. In this talk I will reflect on attempts to find meaning and re-make social life in the wake of ‘stolen’ futures. Drawing from the example of Fairbourne – a small Welsh town that was controversially ‘decommissioned’ due to coastal erosion caused by climate change – these remarks will explore the struggles to compose collective narratives of reimagined futures ‘after progress’.
Prof Anne Karpf (Life Writing and Culture): How to do more or how to do less? The regulation of time in a productivity economy
We are besieged by advice about ways to make ourselves more productive, matched by an almost equal insistence on the importance of ‘tuning out’. In this paper I investigate the symbiotic relationship between these two idealised states by exploring the conception of time in mindfulness manuals, books and websites. I suggest that ‘doing mindfulness’ has become an additional personal task in the neoliberal productivity economy.
Prof John Gabriel (Sociology) and Dr Richard Ross in conversation: The significance of time in oral history interviewing
The purpose of our conversation will be to explore the concept of time in the natural and social sciences and assess the relevance of such diverse disciplinary understandings to oral history interviews and in particular the relationship between the interviewer and participant in the ordering and interpretation of time.
Session format: This is a hybrid event and will be delivered online via MS Teams and in person in room TM1-06, First Floor, Roding Building, 166-220 Holloway Road, London, England N7 8DB.
If you are London Met staff or student, please use your London Met email address to register.
Please contact the Research and Postgraduate Office if you have any questions about this or any of our other events - [email protected]
To receive notifications of future events, please follow the Research and Postgraduate Office on Eventbrite.
For internal use only XX050 XX055 XX051 XX058 XX061
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
TM1-06, First Floor, Roding Building, 166-220 Holloway Road, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
