Hi everyone,

I recently came across John Law's book "After method: mess in social science research".

Does anyone know of any groups, networks, seminars, whatever, geared specifically towards postgrads on the process, challenges, practicalities, experience of doing social science research??

Thanks so much!

No But I need one!

No but you reminded me that I need to read this book :-)

I love John Law. I totally ripped off his argument from 'Organizing Modernity' in my thesis but the one time I met him I was too nervous to say anything! I guess you could say he's my first academic crush :-)

Don't know of any seminars as such; I guess you could keep checking the Lancaster university website (where he is based - sorry if that's stating the obvious) and his own page on the site which has a bit list of other publications (including obscure working papers) that might be of interest. The idea of 'messiness' seems to have really taken off but I've not come across any other publications which deal with it as a major theme - does anyone else know of any?

Hi Heifer!

Thanks for that - I had gone through his website really briefly - I will definitely check it out again for the more obscure stuff! I've found a few PPT's done through the old ESRC Research Methods Festival on 'messiness' in research, but like you say, there doesn't seem to be anyone else writing about this (other than Law). Does anyone else know??

I'm not sure if you look for messiness directly it will come up. I came to it through post-structuralism and interpretive policy analysis, so maybe it's something that's used in different approaches, rather than approach itself which will then attract groups/writing. Not sure, but that is my hunch.