NCRM videos

Sophie Woodward - Object interviews: getting participants to encounter and/or connect with things

06-11-2019

Sophie Woodward from The University of Manchester presents 'Object interviews: getting participants to encounter and/or connect with things' at Methods Fair 2019. Abstract: This talk outlines object interviews as a way of carrying out research into things as well as with things (as a 'material method', Woodward (2019)), as material culture is a route into exploring multiple aspects of people’s material and social lives and relationships. I outline the possibilities of object interviews in two ways; firstly as a space of encounter (where interviewees are sea-consciously and reflexively engaging with an object and their relationship to it) and secondly as a point of connection (where interviewees have a habitual, routinised relationships to the objects). The talk will then engage with ways of getting people to talk about things, as well as the possibilities and limitations of the words that people say to explore relationships that are often not verbalised.