Events
We organise regular workshops throughout the academic year. Our Methods Fair takes place in Spring, and our Methods Summon School takes place in June/July each year.
Workshops and talks
Join us for one of our talks, workshops or other methods-related events.
Methods schools
Our popular programme of research methods courses take place in the Summer.
.jpg)
Methods fair
Learn more about our next Methods Fair in May.
Past events
Read more about some of our events from the past.
Bookings
Bookings are done either through Microsoft Forms or Eventbrite, depending on the event. All reminders and updates about your booking will be sent to the email you used when signing up for the event so please ensure that you read these messages. If you need to cancel or amend your booking, please email methods@manchester.ac.uk.
Non-attendance
The University has an increasing problem with non-attendance at events. Booking onto an event which you then don’t attend can lead to food and drink wastage, and it also reduces availability of places for others to attend.
We appreciate that plans and circumstances change. Wherever possible, if you can no longer attend an event, please cancel your place via the original booking method or by emailing methods@manchester.ac.uk.
Please provide us with as much notice as possible when cancelling, thank you.
Events
Methods Lab: The Moving Century, a History of Migration Seen from the Future
30 September 2026, 10am - 2pm; John Thaw Studio Theatre at The Martin Harris Centre
The Moving Century, a History of Migration Seen from the Future is a 105 minute multimedia theatrical performance that combines social research, visual archives, storytelling and activism. It is a journey through images and words, from the landing of African soldiers in Marseille in 1914 to today's illegal sea crossings of the Mediterranean and the English Channel.
Queer Methods in the Social Sciences Workshop Series
- 12 October, Queer and Feminist Art-Based Methods Workshop (Manchester)
- 26 October, Queer and Trans Archival Research Workshop (Liverpool)
- 9 November, Methods for Interviews and Fieldwork with LGBTQ Organizations (Liverpool)
- 23 November, Queer Methods in Social Sciences Toolkit Launch and Showcase (Manchester)
How might queer approaches transform the way we do social science research?
Join us in Manchester and Liverpool for a series of interactive workshops exploring Queer Methods in the Social Sciences, designed for postgraduate researchers and early career researchers interested in gender, sexuality, and innovative approaches to research.
The series brings together leading researchers working across a range of qualitative methods, offering a chance to explore how queer can shape the way we design, conduct, analyse and communicate research. Workshops will focus on arts-based research, archival research, and fieldwork and interviews, whilst making space for broader questions about what queer methods can offer social science research.
Register your place using the links above.
Staff and PGR Training: Critical Data Visualisation
With Dr Luca Scholtz; 12pm - 4pm, Wednesday 11 November 2026
This session invites researchers from across the humanities and sciences to engage critically and creatively with data visualisation. Participants will learn to better recognise and critique biased, oversimplified, or misleading representations of data, and to develop their own visualisations to explore and communicate data that is relevant to their research.
This training will particularly appeal to researchers in the humanities and social sciences with no or limited previous experience in working with data, as well as more experienced researchers across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities who wish to better understand critical and creative approaches to data analysis and visualisation. There will be an opportunity for participants to work with their own (tabular) data, so please bring this to the session if you wish to. The session does not require any previous technical knowledge.
Archives out of the Box: Innovating Methods for Critical and Creative Praxis
8 and 9 December 2026; University of Manchester
This two-day workshop will help participants translate theoretical insights into practical methodological tools and think with archives “outside of the box”.
Participants are invited to present an "archival puzzle": an object, image, absence, or contradiction that has challenged their archival journey. For instance, disruptive more-than-human agents or colonial planning failures might reveal how material conditions or marginalised actors shape social conditions but are hard to map using conventional archival practices.
Queries and submissions should be directed to archivesoutofthebox@manchester.ac.uk
Making (slowly) as method: stitching together a patchwork ethnography of natural textile dyeing
Dr Laura Pottinger, 12pm-1pm, Thursday 1 October 2026
This Methods North West Lunchtime Seminar draws on emerging ideas about ‘patchwork ethnography’, an approach mobilising the often multi-sited, fragmented, non-linear character of ethnographic research in practice.
Action-guiding for whom? Social movements and political theory of migration
Dr Clara Sandelind, 12pm - 1pm Thursday 22 October 2026
In this Methods North West Lunchtime Seminar, attendees will be introduced to grounded normative theory and consider how empirical engagement with social movements can inform normative political theorising.
Collaboration, Creativity, and the Ethics of Care: Engaging arts-based methods to explore everyday inequalities
Dr Wren Radford, 12pm - 1pm Thursday 28 January 2027
This Methods North West Lunchtime Seminar will talk through the creative arts-based and collaborative approaches used in the Embodied Everyday project, showcasing how ethical, practical, and creative elements work through each stage of the research process, from collaborative research design, through group workshops, and preparation of creative outputs.
Viral Memories: Understanding Gay Men’s Experiences of HIV and COVID-19 in the UK
Dr Sophie Atherton, 12pm - 1pm Thursday 18 February 2027
This Methods North West Lunch Time Seminar will explore the methodology and methods used in more depth by discussing some of the benefits and limitations of conducting online semi-structured interviews.
Getting to know the unemployed: insights from 12 months of ethnographic research among Manchester’s Jobseekers
Dr John Foster, 12pm - 1pm Thursday 6 May 2027
In this Methods North West Lunchtime Seminar, attendees will explore the challenges and benefits of immersive longitudinal research into social life alongside the personal challenges of the ethnographer in faithfully representing what they have experienced.