Understanding community through mobile interviews and participatory mapping

Presentation given at Methods in Dialogue: Researching Social Relations in Urban Environments.

I will reflect on the challenges and possibilities of two techniques we are using in on-going research to understand the everyday experiences of individuals’ social networks, neighbourhoods, and communities in a socially, economically and culturally diverse inner-city neighbourhood in a large British city. Alongside conventional ethnographic methods, we have completed participatory maps and walking interview with a diverse group of residents aged 18 to 30. I will comment on the insights we are gaining from these techniques and consider how different methods might be synthesised to better understand how individuals engage in and articulate their connected lives.