We are delighted to be hosting a range of pre-conference workshops ahead of our kick-off for QRSE2024 on Monday 29th July.

 

Pre-conference workshop are aimed at Doctoral and Early Career Researchers. They are led by scholars with considerable expertise in their respective topics and who span different career stages.

 

Each workshops costs £50. Participants can choose one session in the morning and/or one session in the afternoon. The pre-conference workshop day starts at 10.30am and finishes at 5.00pm. Workshop participation includes breakfast, lunch, and refreshments throughout the day.
 

You will have the option of booking onto pre-conference workshops when you register for the main QRSE2024 conference. Places on the pre-conference workshops are limited and will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.
 

The workshops available are as follows:

 

Morning Workshops (you can attend one out of the following four options)

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Workshop 1: Conducting Interviews and Focus Groups - With a Twist!

Dr Ioannis Costas Batlle University of Bath 

This workshop will give you the opportunity to conduct in-person interviews or focus groups, discuss the practicalities, strengths, and weaknesses of both methods, and ultimately reflect on how they may be applicable to your own research projects. In part 1 of the session, you will practice with 'traditional' interview or focus group formats; in part 2, we will add a twist by using timelines, drawings, or walking methodologies. The workshop will be highly practical and will focus on 'doing' and reflecting; there will be minimal 'lecturing' about each of the methods or approaches.

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Workshop 2: Co-production: What is it, why do it, and how might it be practiced?

Professor Brett Smith Durham University 

Dr Toni Williams Durham University

There is growing interest in co-production in the sport and exercise sciences/kinesiology. The objective of this workshop is to enhance knowledge of co-production and provide opportunities for how we might advance co-produced research in order to make a genuine difference with people in (in)active communities, sporting contexts, and different cultures. To meet this objective, we will first discuss what is meant by co-production. An original typology is offered to think about different ways co-production is defined and put to use. The workshop will then attend to why researchers might turn to co-producing research along with various challenges involved with doing it. Practical options for how to co-produce research and various criteria for judging the quality of it are discussed. Drawing on current research, we also bring intersectionality and co-production into conversation. To stimulate dialogue amongst workshop participants, questions about co-production are raised throughout. No knowledge of co-production is needed for the workshop. But a curious mind and an interest in wanting to make a difference beyond just publishing would be beneficial.

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Workshop 3: Feminist Methodologies

Dr Jessica Francombe-Webb University of Bath

Feminist methodologies stem from women’s experiences and critiques of science, which over the last 40 years have expanded into diverse and interdisciplinary approaches to scholarship. In this session, we will review what is feminist about feminist methodologies. In doing so, we will discuss amongst us core characteristics of feminist methodologies, including epistemology, standpoints, power relations, ethics, positionality and reflexivity, praxis/social action, participatory practices, and the politics of representation. By the end of this session, participants will gain a better understanding of feminist methodologies, discuss the methodological practices of feminist inquiry, and consider how feminist approaches can inform their own work.

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Workshop 4: To Open or Not to Open? An interactive introduction to open qualitative research

Dr Annayah Prosser University of Bath

Open research has developed dramatically in the past decade. However much of the advances in this space have been concerning quantitative methods, and the implications of openness and transparency for qualitative researchers are often not well considered by institutions, journals and academics. This workshop is an interactive introduction to open qualitative research. We will discuss how open research practices might best translate to qualitative research and explore how researchers can demonstrate reflexivity, ethical awareness and rigour in their open research. We will explore your research philosophy, methods and values, and what open research practices might best align with your research.

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Afternoon Workshops (you can attend one out of the following four options)

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Workshop 5: Creative Methods with Impact 

Dr Bonnie Pang University of Bath

Based on comics and radio-drama plays co-created with participants, we will discuss a few key issues related to creative research methods such as research design, power relationships, representations, and knowledge production. This workshop will enable you to draw on a range of information in order to design a research project that takes into account creative research methods as a data collection method as well as a dissemination method, and potentials for public engagement and impact. See related book Creative and Inclusive Research Methods in Sport, Physical Activity and Health
Understanding British Chinese Children’s Experiences.

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Workshop 6: Poststructuralist discourse analysis workshop

Professor Sarah Riley Massey University

In this workshop, Sarah Riley will take you through some of the key principles underpinning forms of discourse analysis informed by poststructuralist theory. Drawing from the work of Michel Foucault; the many feminist psychologists who drew on, and developed, these ideas; and the recent Deleuzian-informed turn to affect, we will then consider understandings of discourse, power as productive, diffuse, disciplinary, and operating through subjectivity. From this, we will explore macro and micro discourses, subject positions, norms, technologies of self, and ‘feeling rules’. These concepts will be explained and explored in terms of what they can offer the discourse analyst. Workshop delegates will have an opportunity to apply these analytics to data.

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Workshop 7: Analysing Interview and Focus Group Data using Thematic Analysis

Dr Olivia Brown University of Bath

We will discuss some of the challenges to conducting qualitative analysis, before looking at Thematic Analysis in detail. We will go through Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six-phase approach to Thematic Analysis and see some examples of how it is applied in practice. You will then work in small groups, applying the method to analyse interview transcripts in relation to a research question. By the end of the session, the whole group will combine their analysis with the aim of identifying broad themes that capture the interview data set.

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Workshop 8: Demystifying the Grant Writing Process

Dr Andrea Bundon University of British Columbia 

Professor Cassandra Phoenix Durham University 

Being able to attract external research funding is increasingly seen as an essential skill within academia. Yet, like all skills, ‘writing a grant’ is one that requires some learning. In this hands-on workshop, we will help to demystify the grant writing process. Drawing on our experiences of securing research income, we will start with a brief introduction of ‘how grants work’ before discussing the process we work through from conceptualising a fundable project to hitting ‘send’. Inevitably, this will include some reflection on what has worked well, and what less so. The group will be invited to participate in practical tasks throughout and are asked to come prepared with the ‘spark’ of an idea for a project they would like to see funded.

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