Real time research
The aim of this network was to stimulate research and promote debate on the methodological challenge presented by real time research, through a series of events that developed methods for real time research and brought together social science, computing, new media and art disciplines. The network aimed to address the disciplinary dilemmas and the methodological predicaments of real time research, but its focus was the opportunities for methodological innovation. It set the valorisation of slowness and distance in some social science methods alongside calls for research to ‘expand the present’ of social action to ask: how can we develop the methods of real time?
This project produced a methodological review paper 'Doing real time research: Opportunities and challenges'.
Find out more about this project from their blog.
Event 1: Colloquium: Real Time Research
Saturday 3 December 2011
Goldsmiths, University of London
This opening colloquium brought together key participants from the network to set out an agenda for the discussion of the relationship between ‘live data’, temporality and methods. It was an open event providing an opportunity to map out some of the connections between time and methods in very different research techniques and traditions.
Event 2: Colloquium and Workshop: New Times and Places of Ethnography
Friday 27 January 2012
Goldsmiths, University of London
Colloquium: New Times and Places of Ethnography
Keynote Lecture: Michael Taussig, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University
Saturday 28 January 2012
Workshop: Upload Ethnography: Developing a Real Time Archive
Led by Les Back (Goldsmiths). Working in pairs, participants went to an ethnographic location and recorded a sequenced series of soundscapes, create a temporally-organised visual record, conducted interviews and published field notes at various stages as real-time reflections on the ethnographic process. All this content was sent by smart phones to a web-based ethnographic platform published in real-time.
Event 3: Colloquium and Workshop: New Questions for New Times and New Places
Friday 23 and Saturday 24 March 2012
University of York
What are the differences between web-based research performed with methods that have been digitized (such as online surveys) and those that are natively or born digital, for example, profiling programmes, including recommendation systems. And what kind of ‘social’ emerges in the analysis of real-time web-based data? The first day addressed these questions in the context of a history of the use of survey methods in social research inside and outside the academy.
In the training workshop on the second day, Richard Rogers (Chair of New Media and Digital Media, University of Amsterdam) helped the event participants to experiment with the use of a range of digital methods he has developed for the analysis of social change. Chris Brauer (Goldsmiths) provided training in a use of a tool which can perform filtering and verification of real-time data from disparate channels, thus enabling participants to gain a practical understanding of the methodological affordances of web-based data-sets.
Event 4: Colloquium and Workshop: New Modes of Telling and Researching Society
Thursday 5 and Friday 6 July 2012
University of Manchester
How can art interventions enable us to explore questions of epistemology and de-nature the tools of social research? How can art interventions enable an exploration of events in real time by expanding the possibilities of experiencing the present? On the first day, the colloquium addressed these questions from a variety of perspectives. The second day was a training workshop on art intervention as a method led by the artist-researcher Astra Howard. The participants were invited to take part in a specially designed street intervention that gave first-hand experience of this type of method for engaging and ‘curating’ social life.
For further information, please contact:
Professor Les Back
Department of Sociology
Goldsmiths, University of London
Email: l.back@gold.ac.uk