Doing Visual Research

About the Book

Doing Visual Research offers an innovative introduction to the use of photography, collaborative video, drawing, objects, multi-media production and installation in research. Claudia Mitchell explains how visual methods can be used as modes of inquiry as well as modes of representation for social research.

The book looks at a range of conceptual and practical approaches to a range of tools and methods, whilst also highlighting the interpretive and ethical issues that arise when engaging in visual research. Claudia Mitchell draws on her own work in the field of visual research throughout to offer extensive examples from a variety of settings and with a variety of populations.

Topics covered include:

* Photographs and memory work studies

* Video and social change

* Participatory archiving with drawings and photos

* Working with images/Writing about images

* Can visual methods make a difference? From practice to policy

Doing Visual Research takes an interdisciplinary approach to the subject of visual research, producing a practical introduction to the subject that will be of great use to students and researchers across the social sciences, and in particular in education, communication, sociology, gender, development, social work and public health.

Table of Contents:
PART ONE: INTRODUCTION Introduction Getting the Picture On a Pedagogy of Ethics in Visual Research Who′s in the Picture? PART TWO: VISUAL METHODS FOR SOCIAL CHANGE: TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES Not Just an Object Working with Things, Objects and Artefacts in Visual Research Seeing for Ourselves A Case for Community-Based Photography Community-Based Video-Making PART THREE: ON INTERPRETING AND USING IMAGES Working with Photo Images A Textual Reading on the Presence of Absence Data Collections and Building a Democratic Archive ′No More Pictures without a Context′ (with Naydene de Lange) Look and See Images of Image-Making What Can a Visual Researcher Do with a Camera? Changing the Picture How Can Images Influence Policy-Making?

About the Author :
Claudia Mitchell is a James McGill Professor in the Faculty of Education, McGill University where she is the Director of the McGill Institute for Human Development and Well-being and the founder and Director of the Participatory Cultures Lab. She is  an Honorary Professor in the School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. She was the 2016 recipient of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Gold Medal awarded for the impact of her research which  cuts across a number of areas including girlhood studies, youth, sexuality, and HIV and AIDS, gender violence, and teacher identity, and in a number of countries including Canada, South Africa, Russia, Ethiopia, and Kenya . As a methodologist she is particularly interested in participatory visual research, memory work and material culture, and autoethnography.

Review :
Doing Visual Research offers an excellent starting point for imagining how visual methods might be fruitfully employed. A great supplementary text to aid in the understanding of visual analysis, the importance and technicality of it. Book to advanced for my class, but it is an excellent Text! Should I teach a visual comm methods course, I will definitely use this text! The fact that this book takes an interdisciplinary approach to the subject of visual research is worthwhile for a departmental elective course such as "Mediated Arts Research". Participatory archiving with drawing and photos is a significant feature included in the book that offers demonstrative new media literacy, unlike other published work. We will be using it as a methodological guide that embarks upon other introductory course materials. My students have found the text very insightful to visual communication from the theoretical perspective to actual interpretation of images. An accessible text that is also methodologically rich, also has very helpful illustrations from a range of different projects. Very interesting book, especially when new to the field. Covers wide array from theoretical/scientific background to detailed "how to"-suggestions. Very good for starters who would like to deepen their knowledge in the medium to long run. I will definitely intensify usage when preparing new course on (Service) Design Thinking." A very useful textbook to support students who wish to do visual research This is an excellent text that supplements my already existing guidelines for visual research. This is an accessible and engaging book that I would highly recommend to undergraduate and masters level students who are planning to undertake a dissertation applying visual research. The book will be particularly useful for students with an interest in data production approaches employing photography and film. I was mislead by the title, which is actually too broad. This book needs a subtitle on the cover to specify its scope. I thought it was about visual research in general, more like a methodology book. But it focuses mostly on ethnographic methods, which are reminiscient of visual anthropology, and focuses on a specific geography (sub-Saharan Africa). It is also too much policy oriented. Due to its narrow focus (according to my expectations) it is not suitable for my Theory and Method in Media Visual and Cultural Studies course. Thank you for sending the copy. The module is about the nature of research and its relationship to creativity. Many of the students are working in visual and creative fields. The book is recommended for them. It is a useful source for students who need to understand the function and value of research paradigms but avoid getting trapped in technique. I like it′s approach which is summed up for me by the chapter title, "What can a visual researcher do with a camera?" " Interesting use of case studies to show how visual research can be conducted. There is not too much theory here and it reads like a PhD study, but its simplicity speaks to the students. The book is useful in that it offers clear conceptualisations of the theory of visualisation and clear examples of how to do visual analysis. From the viewpoint of computer science and information systems, a more explicit stance towards technology is something that we have to develop ourselves. In this development this book offers good background knowledge. Unusual research methods that are not usually discussed in other research manuals, but not central to the class. Otherwise, an excellent resource. Unsure whether this book is appropriate for the type of research our students do. Have not had time to review it fully. Many of our students like to do something with visual research. Mostly this only turns out to become a way of illicitation, and they continue with spoken or written data. This book offers them other examples. The personal and activist scope is very welcome An excellent introducton to the practice of doing visual research. Just wasn′t the right match for the course. I preferred the visual methodologies text. Although this is an excellent book in its own right, it is very detailed in terms of visual research methodology, and it is too complex for students working at the level required by this module. Excellent book but not appropriate for the class. Useful and interesting to read This is an excellent text and one that I will use not only in my research methods and methodologies module but also in my community media modules at under and post grad levels. I will also recommend it to the practice-based dissertation module leaders for adoption. This is a very useful text covering some fundamental ideas which students need to adopt to frame their analysis of specific films. A modern approach to research. Another dimension of doing a qualitative research. The visual element cannot be over emphasised. Excellent examples at great taste of anthropology. A good source to comprehend the other aspects of research; that it is not restricted to just words, graphs and numbers.

An excellent reference book. very good book which learners are able to use for research to complete their essays and assignments whist studying for the course An excellent book. More accessible and practically focused than the earlier (groundbreaking) Rose.
Very useful book on visual methods. More practical in focus than the other older choice in this area. Useful, if specific, resource for students wishing to gain an insight into visual ethnography. Useful methodological ′pointers′ and discussion of issues. May need additional theoretical / conceptual reading to complement? A very useful textbook for students who elect to follow a creative route for their final year dissertation. A good starting point for researchers and photographers who seriously want to explore the potential of the visual as a research tool. A good introduction for practice based research. this is a good text if you are considering visual methods, it is a supplementary text as the module is multiprofessional therefore the students follow many different research paths This is an exceptionally useful book and I would I would consider it core for a research methods course. For my particular course, I intend to recommend it to those students who adopt a visual research approach to their data generation.
The book is highly accessible and the inclusion of visual methods in research is demystified. As well as being a ′how to′ publication, the author offers rich examples from her own practice which help to vivify the text. This is an interesting text but it is too specific for BA project students. I would however recommend it to any student planning to use visual research methods. The book is a very well prepared methodological tool to develop skills necessary to analyze visual culture using different perspectives and methods of visual analysis. Using this textbook allows to provide basic knowledge about working with and writing about images: photographs, video, drawings. It also provides knowledge how to “read” the messages of the popular culture. Very useful book for students interested in the methodology Claudia Mitchel provided a very good training in making photography as well as making other imagery (as with extra computer software) become a major endeavour for journalism students.
We have used her text to enhance responses from several fields of regional journalism, namely newspapers and weekly reviews and we can only hope this will become a fully adopted text book in the next courses. This is an excellent guide to the topic The title was mis-leading (at least for me). I was expecting the book to be about doing research using visual techniques in the context of visualisation or human-computer interaction.