New project showcases research methods across Arts and Humanities
A new project is showcasing the wide range of methods used by arts and humanities researchers to explore complex questions, develop new perspectives, and work with partners in academia and beyond.
The Research Methods project, developed by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, focuses not only on what researchers study, but on how they investigate their questions and put their expertise into practice.
Through a series of short films, academics from across the Faculty introduce methods used in their own research and explain what these approaches can reveal. The project spans six areas of research strength: cultural industries, digital, environment, fairer societies, health and heritage.
The methods featured are equally wide-ranging. Researchers demonstrate how approaches including archival research, interviews, ethnography, philosophical enquiry and legal analysis can sit alongside computational methods, artificial intelligence, mapping, translation, participatory research and creative practice.
The films explore how different methods can help researchers to reconstruct experiences from incomplete historical records, understand lived experiences, analyse large datasets, challenge established assumptions and involve communities and other stakeholders directly in the research process.
They also demonstrate the wider applications of arts and humanities expertise. The approaches featured can support interdisciplinary research and collaborations with cultural organisations, communities, industry, policymakers and practitioners, bringing different ways of thinking to questions that extend far beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries.
Alongside the films, an accompanying glossary provides an accessible introduction to key arts and humanities research methods and approaches.
Together, the project offers a snapshot of the breadth of methodological expertise and research culture across the Faculty — and the many different ways arts and humanities research can help us understand people, culture, society and a changing world.
Explore the Research Methods project and discover the methods behind the research.