Doing Discourse Analysis: Research Strategies and Applications
Doing Discourse Analysis: Research Strategies and Applications
The Institute for Lifecourse & Society (ILAS) presented a two-day intensive training workshop titled “Doing Discourse Analysis: Research Strategies and Applications”. It took place on Thursday, 25th April and Friday, 26th April 2024, from 9:00am to 5:00pm each day in Room G006 of the ILAS Building. This session formed a core component of ILAS’s International Research Training Series framed by the overarching theme “Enabling Equity Across the Lifecourse”.
Over the two days, three speakers from the University of Essex, Prof. David Howarth, Dr. Konstantinos Roussos, and Jimena Vázquez García introduced participants to the theoretical and practical foundations of poststructuralist discourse analysis. Emphasis was placed on the philosophical underpinnings of this approach and how it can be operationalised through qualitative methods including participant-focused and ethnographic techniques. The workshop offered strategies for analysing problematized social phenomena and constructing critical, context-sensitive interpretations of concrete discourse. Attendees were invited to bring their own research proposals or data to present and discuss collaboratively with peers and facilitators.
Overall, the event illuminated how poststructuralist discourse theory provides tools to understand, characterise, explain and critique socially constructed meanings in text and talk. It offered hands-on support in designing and applying discourse-analytic methods and fostered a space for critical dialogue around research design, theoretical framing, and methodological rigour in qualitative inquiry.
