Insight on new opportunities for social research
NCRM monitors the evolving research landscape to ensure our courses and resources meet the training needs of the social science community. We gather insight on key issues to shape our activities and help researchers to prepare for upcoming opportunities and challenges.
Our work includes reviews of emerging trends, national collaborations and engagement initiatives that enable us to hear directly from researchers. Through this page, you can access briefing papers on emerging issues affecting social research, information about our latest initiatives and examples of how we respond to researcher needs.
Methods Futures
The Methods Futures project explores factors, including technological and research related developments, that may impact social research. Our aims are to support researchers in anticipating change and to build capacity in a strategically driven methodological responses.
The project has begun with an expanding series of briefings focused on important socio-technical changes that are likely to have a bearing on social research methods and may have greater future impact. Each development raises a range of epistemic, methodological, and interdisciplinary concerns, which should build awareness of potential impacts on social research.
Access the Methods Futures Briefings
Data-driven research skills
NCRM is monitoring the growing demand for data-driven research skills and supports a national expansion of training in this area. As part of this, we published a document in which outlines the case for a co-ordinated UK-wide approach which supports researchers throughout their careers.
NCRM, which already runs a variety of courses related to data-driven research, produced the new document in response to the Economic and Social Research Council’s recently published vision for data-driven research skills in the UK.
Read the NCRM publication on data-driven research skills
Engagement with researchers
A significant aspect of our collaboration with the research community is our engagement work, which enables us to have a rich, ongoing dialogue with researchers, bring together like-minded scholars and support innovation.
These engagement activities include the co-ordination of several networks and groups. The Doctoral Training Partnership Training Network and the Data Resources Training Network provide opportunities for researchers to gain insights into critical topics and help to shape them.
Our methodological special interest groups are vibrant forums that connect researchers people from across the UK who work with related methods. The groups allow researchers to share knowledge, ideas and scholarship, offer inspiration to their peers and hear from leading voices in their fields.
Find out about NCRM’s engagement work
AI in social research
Events
NCRM is running a series of activities throughout 2024 focused on AI in social research. These include the NCRM Annual Lecture 2024, which discussed ways of addressing the challenges that AI poses to social research. Watch the NCRM Annual Lecture 2024
Our event MethodsCon: Futures included a number of sessions on AI as part of a huge range of workshops, presentations and panel discussions. The event provided an opportunity for attendees to engage with, explore and develop futures, with a particular focus on themes that are likely to have significant impact on humanity’s development over the next decades. Read more about MethodsCon: Futures
Training
We are running a series of training events on how AI can be used in research. These include an online workshop, How to Use Gen AI: A Beginner’s Workshop for Researchers, and our free autumn school, The Foundations of Digital Research Methods: An Advanced Critical Introduction, which features a section on AI. We have also run a free in-person workshop, Generative AI and the Future of Social Research: Opportunities, Challenges and Implications.
Videos
Our engagement strategy in 2024 includes a focal area on AI. As part of this, we’re publishing a series of videos in which leading researchers discuss issues AI-related issues from a variety of perspectives.
The first video features a conversation with Dr Wayne Holmes on key issues related to the introduction, use and implications of using AI tools in education research and applied practice. Watch the video