Timescapes 2010 Conference

Timescapes 2010 Conference

Cardiff School of Social Sciences

20th January 2010

Cardiff University

www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/cardifftimescapes

January 13th, Final Updates:

Updated Conference Programme
Updated Conference Abstracts
Updated Time & Society free online access for delegates

Aims of the Conference

The development of Qualitative Longitudinal Methods (QLL) for studying people’s lives and worlds temporally is an exciting area of innovative methodological work in the social sciences today. The conference will (i) focus on the promises and challenges of QLL study; (ii) showcase developments in QLL methodology that are being taken forward by the Timescapes network and (iii) consider how a commitment to multidisciplinary working can assist in taking forward the agendas of QLL/temporal study.

About the Conference

The conference is being organised jointly by Cardiff School of Social Sciences and the Timescapes network (www.timescapes.leeds.ac.uk). Cardiff School of Social Sciences is one of the UK’s foremost multidisciplinary centres of excellence in social science research methodology. Timescapes is the first major Qualitative Longitudinal Study to be funded in the UK. Its substantive interests are in exploring the ways in which personal and family relationships unfold over time and over the lifecourse, along with the significance of time in people’s lives.

Registration dates and fees

Registration fee: £100 per person
Deadline for registrations: 18th December 2009

What is QLL?

QLL study is about more than methods alone. It is a broad methodological enterprise that involves tracking people through time, bringing to light what it means to live in and through time for people’s personal lives, social relationships, and society.

Important questions exist about how to design QLL studies, including how to generate and analyse waves of data that build up over time, and conduct such research ethically.

Additionally, though, QLL study brings together the work of rigorous, interpretive, empirical inquiry with an interest in theorising across the social sciences, including in the following areas:

• generations & the life course
• the personal and cultural dynamics of family life,
• the (discursive) configuring of identities, (inter)subjectivity, relationships and relationality &
• social theorising about time

QLL and multidisciplinary working

There are particular promises and challenges involved in conducting QLL inquiry collaboratively within a multidisciplinary network such as Timescapes. These include finding ways to collaborate across traditions of work that are mainly located within specific disciplines - but that also cross disciplinary boundaries and across geographical space and between different institutions. They also involve addressing issues that may need to be taken forward in a multiplicity of ways.

Programme and Abstracts

Details of the programme are available here, parallel session information is here and available abstracts are here.

Disclaimer

While the details on this website are accurate at the time of writing, and will be updated as often as we are able, the programme is under development and there will be alterations to the programme between now and the conference.

Cardiff School of Social Sciences