The 'craft' of qualitative research

Dr Anna Brown has received the award for Best Paper 2021 from Management Learning, an international journal that provokes new ways of thinking about learning and knowing. Anna's paper, The Mark of the Researcher's Hand: the imperfections of craft in the process of becoming a qualitative researcher, draws on insights from her doctoral training and fieldwork in pottery making to extend conversations about the 'craft' of qualitative research.

The article elaborates on the materially bound and embodied nature of doing research, by comparing experiences of learning to conduct interviews and learning to make pottery. In the article, Anna reflects on the simultaneous becoming of researcher and clay, and challenges expectations for the perfect completion of work.  

Anna conducted her doctoral research at the University of St Andrews School of Management, where she was supported through a School scholarship to complete an autoethnography of craft skill.

Anna is running a methods workshop, 'Methods that Move: affective methods for qualitative researchers', as part of the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science (SGSSS) Spring into Methods programme. Applications are open until Monday 28 February 2022.

Dr Anna Brown in the pottery studio