Annual NWDTC Doctoral Student Event: Transformative Social Science

Friday 17^th October 2014, 12.00pm-5pm

Speakers: Prof. Sandra Walklate, Prof. Fernand Gobet, Prof. Peter Wade, Dr. Mark Elliot, Prof. Michael Hughes, Prof. Chris May

Venue: Moot Room, South Campus Teaching Hub

Using different theories, methods, data and forms of analysis, the social sciences focus on different aspects of the social world: different societies, cultures, systems of exchange, or forms of cognition and perception. By transforming our ways of understanding societies, cultures, systems of exchange and ways of seeing the world, transformative social science offers new insights into the worlds we inhabit. This can be done in a variety of ways: transformation is about new theories, methods and forms of data as well as the cross-fertilisation of ideas but it is also about communicating and engaging with others through research. That said, social scientists should not take the idea of transformative research for granted.

The question is, what is transformative research and what might it mean to pursue it? The purpose of this event was to introduce a series of different views on the concept of transformative social science and help develop new ways of thinking about the transformative capacity of research. It took the form of a panel discussion and series of workshops led by prominent researchers from Liverpool, Lancaster and Manchester in Politics, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Social Statistics and History.