UGA Qualitative Research Program

This check out a new article by faculty Dr. Giovanni Dazzo and co-authors, published in Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies.

Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) has often been characterized as a meaningful way of including young people in research about and for them. Much has been written about the need to develop trusting relationships between adult and youth researchers in this process. These types of research relationships take time to develop authentically and we see a need for that relationship-building time to be built into research designs and timelines. At the same time, in our experience working with the Youth Research Council in Northern Virginia, USA, we have seen youth researchers express desires to use “rapid” research methods, such as hallway interviews, text messaging, speak-back surveys, and video testimonials to gather data from peers. The purpose of this article is to explore these tensions, to uncover the privilege of what have been called slow ontologies, and to offer recommendations for other youth-led research teams.

https://doi.org/10.1177/15327086231224757

Have you ever wondered how to incorporate qualitative research into your teaching? This we're highlighting an exemplar from Affiliate faculty Dr. Tatiane Russo-Tait, published in CourseSource, where composite narratives developed from research data are used as a teaching tool.

This lesson uses composite narratives (vignettes designed from research data) to invite STEM instructors to begin reflecting on their conceptions of equity and how these conceptions may inform their practices in ways that can support or inadvertently hinder student success. Composite narratives are stories that describe collective perspectives and experiences of research participants categorized under specific themes or profiles in qualitative research studies. They provide an account of research findings in accessible and relatable ways that resonate with readers and support reflection and learning. This lesson uses three post hoc composite narratives developed from the results of a study exploring science faculty conceptions of equity and their relationship to teaching practices. This lesson describes a 2.5-hour professional development opportunity to engage STEM instructors in important self-reflection and discussion about a variety of topics (e.g., deficit-thinking, color-evasive ideology, exclusionary practices, inclusive teaching, critical pedagogy, critical consciousness). The lesson’s main goal is to provide a loose framework to facilitate the co-construction of the meaning of equity for participants, and to enable generative conversations that might empower faculty to continue their journey towards developing a critical consciousness and ultimately advancing equitable practices in STEM education

https://doi.org/10.24918/cs.2025.11

Check out a new call for papers for the International Journal Qualitative Studies in Education!

Over the last two decades, we have seen an emergence of thinkers considering the concept of waste (e.g. Bauman, 2003; Scanlan, 2025; Thill, 2015; Viney, 2015). Inevitably, when speaking of waste, the concept of use also emerges, which is addressed in great depth by Ahmed (2019). These thinkers offer many definitions of waste and use; Viney, for instance, describes waste as that which is out of time and out of place; Bauman a redundancy; Thill an “expression of expended, transmuted, or suspended desire… the ur-object” (p. 8). For Ahmed, on the other hand, use(ful) is highly contextual, and may apply to anything practical, functional, enjoyable or present. The use/waste dyad invites questions of power (who or what conditions determine what is useful or wasted?), temporality/historicity (When are things useful or wasteful?), relationality (How do objects or people define their position of use/waste?), affective vicissitudes (How might some waste, e.g. ancient ruins, make us feel compared to other kinds of waste, e.g. human excrement), space (Where does waste reside and what spaces are wasted?), environmental ethics (What can be done with all of our waste?), among others. While waste is often a topic of conversation when speaking about material things, it becomes clear that waste is as much a social concern as it is a material one, with implications for ideologies, subjectivity, and (ethical) behavior.

See images for more information, abstracts due April 30th!

The International Association for Qualitative Inquiry (IAQI) is hosting their second webinar on "Qualitative Inquiry in this Moment". The topic for the second lecture is "Women and Gender Studies under Attack" presented by Dr. Heidi Lewis, the immediate past President of the National Women’s Studies Association. The session will also open with the reading of feminist poetry in the African diasporic tradition of call and response. Our two poetry readers are Tiffani Kelly PhD candidate in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Oklahoma and Victoria Obeng MA candidate in Ethnic Studies at Colorado State University.

Date: April 1st 2026 at 1:00 p.m. EST, (12 noon CST, 11:00 a.m. MST, 10:00 a.m. PST, 8:00 p.m. UK)
Link: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Moi1-_GNSh2NPQDp3x44Cw #/registration

The field of women and gender studies traces its origins to the 1960s- and 1970s-women’s liberation and resistance movement. These departments and programs remain vulnerable under the current Trump administration and other states like Texas are implementing similar polices limiting classroom discussions on “race or gender ideology”. Simultaneously, qualitative inquiry—particularly feminist, interpretive, and critical—is often characterised as suspicious; accused of being rooted in ideology therefore lacking scholarly credentials, not worthy of academic stature—a threat. Women and Gender Studies and qualitative inquiry are not simply aligned; they are co-implicated. Those who contest critical race theory and intersectionality, race, gender, and ethnic studies, and reproductive autonomy are also challenging how knowledge is generated, whose accounts are trusted, which methods and theories matter, and whose stories fill the narrative landscape. This assault on Women and Gender studies is also an assault on interpretive and embodied knowledge, and relational ways of being and knowing.