Methods Workshops: Comparative Cases

Date: Thursday 3 May, 2pm - 4pm

Location: Room 3.5, Roscoe Building (see below for directions)

Workshop Content

This workshop is part of a series on the practice and experience of social science research. The aim is to stimulate debate and to share experiences of methodological issues in researching a range of social science issues. Sessions will explore how different ways of seeing and conceptualising research questions and topics lead to distinctive methodological possibilities and challenges

Each workshop starts with short and relatively informal presentations from people who have approached the same broad research concern in different ways, followed by discussion and debate.

Speakers

'Managing and Compromising in Cross-National Research: Is it worth the effort?' Professor Louise Ackers and Bryony Gill (School of Law, University of Leeds)

Louise and Bryony have been involved in a range of comparative socio-legal projects mainly concerned with highly skilled migration within and into the European Union. Our objective in this workshop is to present some of the challenges and opportunities associated with comparative work and in particular managing cross-national teams. We plan to do this via a series of case studies illustrating the kinds of issues that arise and the implications of these for the production of reliable 'knowledge'. In particular we consider the relative merits of the 'safari' approach fostered by the ESRC and the 'partner' approach required by the European Commission.

'Comparative cross-national research on Europe', Prof Colette Fagan (University of Manchester)

Colette and her colleagues in the European Work and Employment Research Centre undertake comparative research on employment using several methods. One strand of research covers the analysis of harmonised survey data covering a large number of countries (where the challenge is to bring contextual understanding to the interpretation of quantitative indicators). The other main approach is international collaborations with 'country teams' working to a commonly devised research programme that combines the analysis of existing sources (academic literature and policy documents) plus undertaking new empirical work using 'matched' case studies of organisations.

Other details

Academics, researchers working outside academia, and postgraduate students are all welcome. There is no need to register.

In the unlikely event that we have to cancel a workshop we will post a notice to our email newslist and on this web page. As we do not keep a register of people planning to attend you may want to use either the newslist or web page to check that you are not making a wasted journey before setting out, especially if you are travelling from outside the local area.

If you would like to join the newslist please email Victoria.Higham@manchester.ac.uk