Inclusive research: responding to the methodological challenges

This presentation begins by clarifying what makes inclusive research distinctive. It then addresses three broad challenges faced by inclusive researchers: (i) getting started (establishing research relationships, managing ideas, and promoting practical politics through the ethics of the research); (ii) generating and making sense of data (including the team dynamics in the conduct of the research and approaches to inclusive analysis); and (iii) making research impact (including matters of audience and transparency).

The emphasis is on how inclusive researchers have responded to these challenges and how we might usefully think about them; there is no prescription in terms of how things should be done. The presentation is based in part on ESRC-funded research conducted with inclusive researchers, using a focus group dialogic approach, to get a sense of the state of the art in inclusive research and how we might understand what it means to achieve quality in research and inclusivity terms. By sharing a descriptive framework for working together generated from this research the presentation will illuminate various options for doing research inclusively and doing it well.