Hi Researchers! As February rolls round and St Valentine puts love in the air, we thought that for this issue of Research as Craft we’d focus on research projects we love. We hope you love them too.
Who doesn’t have their head turned now and again by a listicle? In this issue of RaC we share six research projects we love and a little bit about why each one caught our eye.
And though this seems like a deviation from our usual format that focuses on a particular research skill or practice, we’ll say: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery - we hope these projects inspire you with new methods and ideas!
Inside the NYPD’s Surveillance Machine, Amnesty Tech.
A citizen science project that mapped the location of facial recognition-enabled CCTV cameras across New York. It’s an excellent example of using the power of the crowd to collect data at a huge scale, while also mobilising the message of your mission. The visuals on the reporting are beautiful, too.UK Citizens’ Jury on Genome Editing, Wellcome Connecting Science.
Citizens’ Juries - groups of citizens brought together to deliberate on a societal or policy issue - aren’t always considered ‘research’ in the traditional sense. But given their growing prominence as a methodology for exploring people’s views on complex issues without a clear answer, we wanted to include an example. In this one, hosted in Cambridge, UK in autumn 2022, 21 people with genetic conditions met for a week to discuss one of the most ethically interesting questions of our time: should editing the DNA of embryos be legal?How the tech sector could move in One Direction, Sacha Judd.
An unexpected research project conducting a survey of One Direction fans, their tech and creative skills and their attitudes to technology careers as a way to explore gender and barriers to STEM careers. It’s also a masterful piece of research storytelling, with a suitable smattering of GIFs, so we don’t want to give spoilers!
The Markup’s Citizen Browser
News outlet The Markup has built its own software to collect browsing data to understand a panel of participants’ experiences online, all while sharing their code and methods in detail. Bridging engineering and investigative research has allowed it to investigate the claims of big tech platforms, for example surfacing that Facebook was still recommending covid misinformation groups after it said it wouldn’t. Departing editor-in-chief Julia Angwin recently shared journalistic lessons for the algorithmic age, exploring methods for research on big tech.Collecting Inclusion Data: Watershed's Approach to Balance and Belonging, Watershed.
In 2021, Bristol-based creative hub Watershed wanted to understand more about their staff so that they could improve their internal approach to inclusion and belonging. Instead of rolling out the usual, cookie-cutter staff survey seen in many organisations, Watershed took an incredibly thoughtful approach to gathering data that put the human first.Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of “Blind” Auditions on Female Musicians, Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse.
From the 1950s, New York orchestras started introducing anonymous auditions – with screens and carpets to hide the identity of the musician playing. Using a dataset spanning almost 40 years and 7,065 auditionees, the authors found that recruitment rates for women increased significantly in the anonymous process. Since this paper was published in 2000, much work has been done around anonymity and hiring processes, as well as challenging the risks of reducing impact of discrimination in hiring without changing the environments people are hired into.
You might have noticed that these projects are all quite different. That’s because, to us, ‘research’ doesn’t always fit the same mould – research is about thoughtful approaches to understanding the world, and doesn’t always happen where you expect.
But it does raise an interesting question: what counts as research? A topic for another issue, perhaps…
💖 Thank you
Thanks for reading Research as Craft. If you think someone else would enjoy it, we’d appreciate you forwarding it on to them or sharing it wherever you hang out on the internet.
Got an idea for an edition? Questions or feedback? Or want to nominate a thoughtful researcher in your network? Hit reply to this email or tweet at us and we’ll add them to our longlist of potential contributors.
Research as craft is co-ordinated by Jenny Brennan and Aidan Peppin. We met in 2019 when we both joined the same tech & society research institute in London, UK. Ever since we’ve been sharing ideas, thoughts, and questions on what research is and how to do it well.