TOWARDS A POST-QUALITATIVE INFORMED APPROACH TO COLLECTIVE MEMORY WORK

In this chapter, the authors explore the potential of collective memory work (CMW) as a method for post-qualitative inquiry (PQI). Drawing on the authors’ experience of conducting a CMW project with a group of young women on their sporting memories, the authors discuss how CMW facilitates the generation of the type of ‘data’ often sought by those researching post qualitatively. Additionally, the authors highlight some shared agendas that are often characteristic of work that either uses CMW or comes from a PQI framing. In doing so, the authors discuss three ways in which CMW may lend itself to PQI by arguing that: (1) it offers a pathway to weaken traditional researcher–participant power relations, (2) it opens up opportunities for participants to reflect on more than the discursive elements of experience and (3) troubles hermetic and static conceptions of memory and consequently identity and being. This chapter concludes by calling for post-qualitative researchers to experiment with CMW and, for those seasoned in CMW, to consider broadening their remit of focus to embrace the sensory, affective and material aspects of workshop settings and memory contexts.