I met H a few weeks ago at the book launch of mutual friend academic writer and trans activist Grace Lavery. H is doing a phd at Brighton about the sexual experiences of the trans community and we talked a lot about Porn Literacy as H is editing a chapter for a journal on the subject. We’re getting together in the near future to discuss this more and it was really exciting to chat to someone with such a familiarity and understanding of the subject. I’m really interested to find out more about H’s work also.
Through learning about H’s phd and approach to academic study, something I have very little experience of I’ve been familiarising myself with the theory of a phenomenographical approach (“Phenomenography is a qualitative research methodology, within the interpretivist paradigm, that investigates the qualitatively different ways in which people experience something or think about something.” – I know I should put the reference down but I wrote the quote out in my notes and forgot to cite it and this is just the blog and not a proper paper or anything so there you go.) to research and the’ interpretivist paradigm’ which the internet at large sums up as : “a belief that reality is multi-layered and complex and a single phenomenon can have multiple interpretations. In studying a phenomenon, research techniques are used that will help us understand how people interpret and interact within their social environment.” This all really resonates with me as I feel like this is a style of enquiry I have been experiencing and honing in on throughout MAAI. Some things can’t be summed up in statistical analysis or figures and this acknowledges that. There are important things to learn about the ways our interactions with the world and each other shape us as individuals and collectively.