MODE/NOVELLA Seminar
Wednesday May 28^th, 10.00-17.00
at the London Knowledge Lab

Facilitators: Kate Cowan, Berit Engøy Henriksen, Catherine Walker, Joe Winter

Qualitative research typically involves some form of transcription (e.g. representing an interviewee’s spoken comments as a written text, or representing a video extract as a written text with still images). Once seen as a relatively straightforward secretarial act of preparing data for analysis, transcription is increasingly acknowledged as an interpretive, theory-laden stage of the research process. Choices about what and how to transcribe will entail inevitable gains and losses, shaping the analytic and rhetorical potentials of the research.

This seminar is aimed at doctoral students at any stage of their research, to support reflexive engagement with decisions about selection and representation in transcription. We will consider key issues, perspectives and ethical implications, drawing in practical examples from doctoral projects linked to MODE and NOVELLA, nodes of the National Centre for Research Methods, which have involved the transcription of:

• face-to-face interviews (including group discussions, interviews in transit and activity-based interviews)
• interviews involving interpreters
• telephone interviews
• email interviews
• video recorded face-to-face interaction
• film and moving image
• online interaction

Participants will also be invited to share and discuss their own challenges relating to selection and representation in transcription.

Registration: Registration is free but places are limited. Please book a place at the online registration page

We would like participants to please read the following article in advance:

Davidson, C. 2009. Transcription: Imperatives for qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 8, no. 2: 35–52. http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/IJQM/article/view/4205