Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials

Have you found some exciting images that you want to explore but don’t know how to start your research or what methods to choose? Do you have a question about an aspect of visual culture that you want to answer?  

Whatever level of experience you have, this classic text will provide you with the key skills you need to complete a visual methods research project, understand the rationale behind each step, and engage with the contexts and power relations that shape our interpretation of visual images. 

With a clear step-by-step approach that is easy to dip in and out of, the book features:  

•Key examples in every methods chapter to demonstrate how the methods work in practice and with different visual materials 
•‘Focus’ and ‘Discussion’ features that help you practice your skills at specific parts of the methods and understand some of the method’s complexities 
•Guidance on researching using digital visual media, such as Instagram and TikTok, integrated throughout the book

This bestselling critical guide is the perfect companion to visual methods projects for undergraduates, graduates, researchers and academics across the social sciences and humanities.

My research interests lie broadly within the field of visual culture. I′m interested in visuality as a kind of practice, done by human subjects in collaboration with different kinds of objects and technologies.

One long-term project, which resulted in a book from Ashgate Press in 2010, looked at family photos. I approached family snaps by thinking of them as objects embedded in a wide range of practices. I interviewed women with young children about their photos, and also looked at the politics and ethics of family snaps moving into more public arenas of display when the people they picture are the victims of violence. The book explores the different ′politics of sentiment′ in which family snaps participate in both their domestic spaces in the public space of the contemporary mass media.

Other work is extending my interest in subjectivities, space and visual practices by exploring experiences of designed urban spaces. I completed an ESRC-funded project on this theme with Dr Monica Degen at Brunel University in 2009, in which we compared how people experienced two rather different town centres: Milton Keynes and Bedford. Monica Degen, Clare Melhuish and I started a new ESRC-funded project in the autumn of 2011. ′Architectural atmospheres, branding and the social: the role of digital visualizing technologies in contemporary architectural practice′ was a two-year ethnographic study of how digital visualizing technologies are being used by architects in a number of architects′ studio in London.

I′m also interested in more innovative ways to produce social science research, especially using visual materials. I was involved in organising the ESRC Seminar Series ′Visual Dialogues: New Agendas in Inequalities Research′ (2010-2012). Please visit the ′Visual Dialogues: New Agendas in Inequalities Research′ for more details. I′m also a member of the OpenSpace Research Centre.