Presentation on Scoping Methods

My supervisor Prof. Teal Triggs invited me to deliver a presentation on my research methods; which I did this past Wednesday to MA Design Writing Criticism students at the London College of Communication. Other presenters were Dr. Claire McAndrew, Dr. Yoko Akama, and Sheila Pontis. The presentations were a great way to share some of [...]

Analysing ‘Explorations’

Introduction
‘Explorations’ is a fieldwork method that was completed in Lebanon in July 2009. The aim of ‘Explorations’ was to scope out initial empirical insight into the barriers of social integration in Lebanon, in relation to those stated by Safia Saadeh: Socio-political rigidity, geographical segregation, emphasis on differences rather than similarities, social institutions and social [...]

Reviewing ‘Explorations’: A Primary Research Method

‘Explorations’ proved to be an efficient empirical method for the case study at this stage of the research. The richness of the findings that were extracted from only 18 ‘Explorations’ kits was surprising, and the response rate was 100%, with almost all the tasks completed within each kit.

These successes were due to a number of [...]

A Wordle of this!

At Uscreates, we’ve been using Wordle as a tool to analyse both websites and content, and it’s been proving very useful. What Wordle does is create a hierarchical visualisation of a website or any piece of text by making the words with the highest occurrence largest, and those with the fewest smallest. Simple.
I decided to [...]

1st International Visual Methods Conference

Last week, I attended the 3-day 1st International Visual Methods Conference at the University of Leeds. The conference brought together over 250 academics and professionals from social and visual research and practice fields, and involved over 150 presentations.

Some presentations covered visual methods as a means of collecting insight on the field, such as disposable cameras, [...]

Interactive matrix for ‘Explorations’ responses

4.2.1.0 (What’s this number?)
Going through the responses of 18 participants who completed ‘Explorations’ entails over 1080 unique pieces of information (in textual, illustrative, photographic and audio forms). Although I do not aim to analyse this information using any quantitative methods, I still need to make that large amount of information manageable to be able to [...]

‘Explorations’ complete!

4.2.1.0 (What’s this number?)
I travelled back to Lebanon in July to undertake PhD-related fieldwork. It’s been a week since I am back in London, and I will be going through a synthesis phase, absorbing, deciphering and analysing the large amount of information collected over my trip. Part of my fieldwork has been the Cultural Probes [...]

RNUAL 3 Presentation

4.2.1.0 (What’s this number?)
This is a podcast and slideshow from my presentation today at RNUAL 3, University of the Arts London. I’m very grateful for the enthusiasm the audience showed for this piece of research, and a big thanks to Sheila for the late night rehearsals!

Chancing on ////o/

2.1.2.1 (What’s this number?)
Although I categorised this post under My Triumphs, the credit should go to my dear friend, David Habchy who recommended ////o/ (www.111101.net) to me.
I believe many researchers who are pursuing their research abroad on the context of Lebanon, would probably agree that it is challenging to find references on Lebanon in universities [...]

PhD Thesis Chapter Outline

I got the hint – from my supervisors and many PhD guide books – that it can never be too early to write a thesis outline, even though I am only 6 months into a 6 year research.
The challenging aspect of attempting to write a PhD thesis chapter outline this early is that none of [...]