Qualitative Research and Hypermedia: Ethnography for the Digital Age

Bella’s main research interests are in the field of cultural sociology, and particularly focus on placed identities, cultural representation, regeneration and heritage. They fall into five broad areas of research:

Cultural display, urban redevelopment and the cultural economy
Qualitative methodology, especially hypermedia, visual ethnography, multimodality.
Cultural consumption, heritage, museums, visitability.
Class, social disadvantage and community development
Place, community, cities: real, virtual and imagined.

My research interests are underpinned by a sustained, critical methodological engagement with ethnographic and qualitative research. This includes work on contemporary developments in qualitative data analysis, writing and representation, as well as a focus on of the self and (auto)biography in qualitative inquiry. I have led and been involved in a number of funded projects focussing on qualitative research methods and methodological development. I am currently the Director of the Cardiff Node of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) Qualitative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: Innovation, Integration and Impact (QUALITI) (2005-8).

Paul Atkinson is a Distinguished Research Professor in Sociology at Cardiff University, where he is also Associate director of the ESRC Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics. His recent publications include: Everyday Arias: An Operatic Ethnography, Risky Relations (Katie Featherstone, Aditya Bharadwaj, Paul Atkinson and Angus Clarke) and the third edition of Ethnography: Principles in Practice (Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson). His new book, written with Sara Delamont and William Housley is Contours of Culture and was published by Alta Mira early in 2008. He and Sara Delamont edit the Journal of Qualitative Research.