Walking alongside or visitors in life? Participant–researcher relations in qualitative longitudinal research
Workshop in the 7th European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, Helsinki University 12 January 2024
Our Finnish team participates in the ECQI 2024 conference in Helsinki on 10-12 January 2024. In cooperation with a multidisciplinary group of researchers, we will organise a workshop on qualitative longitudinal research from the perspective of research participation
![](https://ba9b5cf6a3.clvaw-cdnwnd.com/3e6cb96e9228f9a89e022302d0e01f1c/200000164-92ca892ca9/Helsingin%20yliopisto.jpeg?ph=ba9b5cf6a3)
We invite conference participants to collaborative reflection on the strengths and challenges of qualitative longitudinal research. Qualitative longitudinal research is often described as walking side-by-side with the participants, whose life paths may challenge many of the expectations and plans written down in research proposals. The aim of this workshop is to update this image by gathering experiences from a variety of approaches, where the relation to participants might be more diverse, fluid, changing, and even disturbing sometimes, raising multiple ethical questions and tensions.
Our aim is
to learn from each other and offer a floor to joint exploration focusing on the
changing relations between the participants and the researcher(s). How to work with
the relation analytically as intrinsically tied to knowledge production during
the process? How to work with the fact that the participants see the
relationship from a very different, sometimes unpredictable lenses than the
researcher? What are the ethical commitments made, unwritten, yet powerful at
the time of ruptures and doubts?
The
coordinators represent diverse disciplines and present short introductory notes
and provocation/questions from their projects and experiences as invitation and
opening space to the joint reflections. The examples presented will come from different
projects, where the participants age range from early years (1-8-year-olds) to
old age.
Coordinators:
Niina Rutanen, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Mari Vuorisalo, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Kaisa Vehkalahti, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Helena Ristaniemi, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Elisa Tiilikainen, University of Eastern Finland
The 7th
European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry
Parallel session 7C, klo 14:00 - 15:30, Helsingin yliopiston
päärakennus sali U3041