School of Social and Political Science

Description

In this workshop, we will experience the reanimating data methodology in practice – working with a feminist interview archive generated by Sue Sharpe in 1979. The reanimating data method is inspired by the queer temporalities theorised by Beth Freeman in her 2010 book Time Binds – facilitating felt connections between past and present and helping us escape well-worn narratives of social change. In this workshop we mobilise the method and archive to explore the post-work imaginaries described by Kathi Weeks in her 2011 book The Problem with Work in which she revisits the texts of the wages for housework movement, asking what is in this for us now? Could it be that the archive gives us access to unrealised utopias – radical impulses and possibilities obscured by neoliberalism? Working with a single group interview with hairdressers in 1979 and other contemporaneous materials from Spare Rib and Hairdressing Today, we will explore theory and methods of reanimating data and invite you to create poems and collages that facilitate new past-present-future communications.

Preparation

Pre-workshop reading

Explore the reanimating Data blog and archive

Bring – a photograph/ image of a haircut that you would like to have now.

This workshop is made possible with kind funding from the Research Training Centre in the School of Social and Political Sciences, and as such is primarily aimed at PhD students and ECRs. Please email the organiser Niamh Moore, Sociology at niamh.moore@ed.ac.uk if you would like to participate and are not a PhD student or ECR as there may still be space. Lunch will be provided.

This is a free event, which means we overbook to allow for no-shows and to avoid empty seats. While we generally do not have to turn people away, this does mean we cannot guarantee everyone a place. Admission is on a first come, first served basis.