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What motivated you to engage the public with your work?

As a qualitative researcher, engaging with the 'public' as participants in my research is vital to the success of the work I do. For this reason, finding new and creative ways to engage people with my research has always been fundamental to my work.  Whilst carrying out a project investigating family resemblances I was struck by how much this research topic resonated with people's everyday family lives and this inspired me (along with other members of the project team) to go further in how I engaged with the public, thinking creatively about ways to tap into the public fascination with resemblance. The resulting exhibition proved rewarding in ways I had not expected. Not only were we able to use our research to tap into the public imagination, but the ways people engaged with the themes of the exhibition also fed back into the project - enhancing our research in ways we could not have anticipated.

Describe the public engagement work you have done.

Public engagement in qualitative research is often an ongoing process. Rather than disseminating 'findings' at the end of the project, the public are engaged as research participants from early in the process. Aside from this level of public engagement I also (with colleagues Hazel Burke and Jennifer Mason) put on an exhibition about family resemblances http://www.reallifemethods.ac.uk/whoareyoulike/  at a local community arts centre. The exhibition involved a number of modes of engagement:

'Educating' people about the research we did. Instead of focusing on facts or findings our message was about the significance of everyday lives in social research, sparking people's imaginations to help them to think differently about their own lives through an exploration of one family's photo album. We wanted people to be able to go home and look at their own family albums in a new way. 

Incorporating people's own photos and ideas about resemblance in a photo competition. The photos taught us new things about resemblances that we were able to use in our research.

Inviting people to leave written responses to specific questions we posed in the exhibition. Many people left stories of their own family resemblances which were interesting for our study.

A press release (resulting in a piece in a local paper and a radio interview).

What are your top three tips for other researchers?

1. Think beyond the idea of 'feeding back' hard and fast 'findings' or 'results'. Our project did not have 'results' which could be communicated in this form so instead we focused on using our research to help spark people's imaginations and encourage them to see their own everyday lives in new ways.

2. It can be helpful to think of public engagement as an ongoing process, or dialogue. For example, in the family resemblances project the public participated in the research by taking part in interviews. We then engaged the public in an exhibition where we used the findings from these interviews to share ideas with the wider local community and press. In the process of doing this we also learned new things that we could use in the project.

3. A supportive research team. The exhibition was very much a team effort which could not have been accomplished without the cooperation of my colleagues. For those researching alone (like PhD students) it may be worth thinking about joining with other researchers to organise a similar event of exhibition.

What are your top three resources to support your engagement work?

1. Small 'pots' of funding are often available for public engagement work. We bid for money to be part of the ESRC 's 2008 Festival of Social Science which involved completing a very short form. This enabled us to print our exhibition materials.

2. Existing local community organisations. We held our exhibition at the Zion Centre (a local community arts centre). Working with the centre helped us to engage with people our research may not have ordinarily reached (such as young people).

3. A supportive research team. The exhibition was very much a team effort which could not have been accomplished without the cooperation of my colleagues. For those researching alone (like PhD students) it may be worth thinking about joining with other researchers to organise a similar event of exhibition.

What would you say to encourage another researcher to engage with the public?

Engaging the public is something which can work as a dialogue. By thinking imaginatively about different modes of engagement in your work it is possible to both inspire and be inspired by public engagement.