Leah Gilman

Discover how fiction can breathe life into your research. Fiction – in the form of everyday storytelling, prose, plays, films, folktales, and comics – can be powerful and resonant. This engaging book introduces the ways in which fiction can inform, inspire and enliven all kinds of research. Presenting a range of case studies and examples from diverse disciplines, this book explores how and why researchers have employed fiction and fictional techniques throughout the research process, including using fiction to communicate research findings. An essential primer to thinking creatively with fiction , the book: - discusses a range of theoretical perspectives on the use of fiction in research; - explores challenges and ethical questions for researchers using fiction; - offers practical advice, creative prompts and resources. Enabling the reader to reflect on how fiction might be used in their own research, this comprehensive introduction will help students and experienced researchers embark on their own research-based fiction projects in no time.

Discover how fiction can breathe life into your research. Fiction – in the form of everyday storytelling, prose, plays, films, folktales, and comics – can be powerful and resonant. This engaging book introduces the ways in which fiction can inform, inspire and enliven all kinds of research. Presenting a range of case studies and examples from diverse disciplines, this book explores how and why researchers have employed fiction and fictional techniques throughout the research process, including using fiction to communicate research findings. An essential primer to thinking creatively with fiction , the book: - discusses a range of theoretical perspectives on the use of fiction in research; - explores challenges and ethical questions for researchers using fiction; - offers practical advice, creative prompts and resources. Enabling the reader to reflect on how fiction might be used in their own research, this comprehensive introduction will help students and experienced researchers embark on their own research-based fiction projects in no time.

This book assumes an “everyday life” perspective towards masking in public spaces in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic. Facemasks are perhaps one of the most tangible ways in which the changes wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic were made visible. In the space of a few months in 2020, masking in the UK went from being almost non-existent in public to becoming widespread, both before and after the UK government mandated masking in most enclosed public spaces in July 2020. In this context, the speed and scale of the introduction of masking in public settings offers sociologists a rare chance to document the (contested) emergence of a new social practice. The authors argue that the nature of masking during the pandemic means that masking practices need to be understood through the entwinement of material, interactional, and moral dimensions. By developing a relational perspective to explore the relationship between the materiality and moral significance of masking, and how this translated into the development of masking practices in public spaces, the authors argue further that the specific context of masking during the pandemic provides sociologists with a unique lens to think through the nature of material, interactional, and moral practices in general.

What is expected of 21st Century egg and sperm donors, and how does being a donor impact on men and women’s own personal lives and relationships? How do donors navigate connections and relationships created by donation? What do these connections mean to them, and to the people around them –their partners, parents, siblings and children? Donor conception is becoming increasingly widespread and since the new millennium, we have witnessed a dramatic shift in the way that donor conception is regulated and practiced in many jurisdictions around the world. In the past, donor conception has often been a family secret and donors were, almost by definition, anonymous. Now, ‘openness’ is seen as the ideal and donors can expect to be traced or contacted by those born from their donations. But what does this shift mean for donors, and their families? This path-breaking book draws on in-depth interviews with donors, their kin and fertility counsellors, and addresses these questions by analysing how understandings of donation are shaped by the regulatory, cultural and relational contexts in which they are formed. The authors also discuss what donation stories can tell us about contemporary understandings of connectedness, time and morality in the context of reproduction and family life, and consider how reproductive ‘openness’ might be done differently.