The Methodological Unit organizes a weekly Brown Bag Seminar to highlight novel methodological approaches in humanities and social sciences. The idea of the meetings is to introduce methodological innovations and cutting-edge research in various disciplines in an easily accessible manner and have an interdisciplinary discussion in an easy-going atmosphere over lunch. Bring your own lunch, we bring fresh methodological topics!
Every Wednesday at 12.15.
Exceptions: Brown Bag Seminar is taking a break on 4.12. and on 11.12. will be the final seminar of 2024. Brown Bag Seminars will recommence in the new year on 15.1.2025.
You are welcome to join us at seminar room 524, Fabianinkatu 24 A (access via door, not courtyard), 5th floor, or online via Zoom.
There will be a 20-minute introduction to the methodological theme, followed by an open discussion of 40 minutes. The seminars are open to everybody. We expect a multidisciplinary and methodologically curious audience from different faculties and units of the central campus. The language of the meetings can be Finnish or English.
The most important prerequisite for participation is not methodological expertise, but an open mind towards new methodological innovations and discussion across methodological and disciplinary boundaries.
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Click here for more information on past Brown Bag Seminar and Brown Bag Lunch events.
In the 1990s social sciences were, according to some, a battlefield of raging wars with troops in camps named, often in a sweeping gesture by the opponent, for example damned positivists, quasi-realists, relativists, gossipers, poets, cold free-riders, activists, colonialists etc. There were also fierce debates about the differences among those who engaged in developing methodologies for the qualitative interview. For example, feminists seeking emancipation, solidarity and sisterhood during the in-depth interview were not necessarily on the same page with neither stand-point nor discourse analysis. Where are we now in the ruins, what can be found in the rubble, or, possibly, in the flourishing commons? This talk will present an overview of the last 30 years of ideals and differences in the qualitative interview methodology. The talk will present three different and thriving interview traditions and argue that despite their overt differences they are not incompatible yet should not be sloppily conflated either. Furthermore, in the era of social media and big data, the interview may again need to be defended.
Elina Oinas is professor in Sociology at the Swedish School of Social Science at the University of Helsinki, Finland since 2015, and currently a core fellow at Helsinki Collegium of Advanced Studies. She is also Vice President of the International Sociological Association 2023-2027. Her long-term research interests are gender, the body, health, feminist science and technology studies STS, global sociology, global development, and girlhood studies.
Click here for practical information on the Brown Bag Seminar events.