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Current projects

Find out about some of the current research projects undertaken by the Qualitative Methods Research Group at Birkbeck.

Home Office Innovation Grant: Designing and evaluating graduate policing training

  • As part of a wider collaboration with the Mayor's Office for Policing in London (MOPAC), University College and Birkbeck's School of Law, ICPR Dr Almuth McDowall is currently leading two projects considering training motivation and how to train officers in evidence based policing. The work is feeding directly into the new standards for graduate policing training.

Digital Brain Switch 

  • This project has been supported by the EPSRC (PI Professor Jon Whittle). The Balance Network (EPSRC) has supported follow-on funding for dissemination and impact activities.
  • Dr Rebecca Whiting is one of the researchers working on this multi-disciplinary project which explores how digital communication technologies affect our ability to manage switches across work life boundaries. Using innovative qualitative methods (participant video diaries and video elicitation narrative interviews) the aim is to observe how and why people switch between roles, the boundaries that they create, and how they manage them.  You can find out more about the project on its website and follow the project team on twitter @digibrainswitch

Age at Work

  • This project has been supported by the Richard Benjamin Trust (PI Dr Katrina Pritchard) and the School of BEI at Birkbeck.
  • Various conceptualisations and categorisations of age are of central importance to our understanding and experience of changing employment and retirement policy within the UK. Dr Katrina Pritchard of Swansea University and Dr Rebecca Whiting in this department are carrying out internet research which involves gathering data from a variety of web-based media (including websites, blogs, stock images and tweets). Discourse analysis and visual analytic approaches are being used to examine specific constructions of age, for example, ‘generations’, in relation to other discussions of interest to organization and management research. You can follow the project on twitter @ageatwork or read the project blog.