Psychology Dept. Research Seminar – Prof. Carla Willig. The Use of Dual Focus Methodology in the Study of the Phenomenological Repercussions of Cancer Discourse

*** Everyone Welcome! No need to book in advance*** 

Date: Thursday 24th January 2019
Time: 16:00-17:00
Room: Building 9, BG09A
Professor Carla Willig (City University)

Title: The Use of Dual Focus Methodology in the Study of the Phenomenological Repercussions of Cancer Discourse

Abstract:

Both Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) are widely used in qualitative psychology. IPA is primarily concerned with accessing the meaning and texture of experience whilst FDA focuses on mapping the discursive resources available to people as they talk about their experiences.

This talk is concerned with the possibility of combining Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) in a dual focus methodology. It will develop the argument that such a methodology provides us with the tools to examine the phenomenological repercussions of being positioned within dominant discourses. By integrating elements from phenomenology and discourse analysis, dual focus methodology allows the researcher to examine the interplay between language, culture and experience, and to situate subjective experiences within their socio-cultural contexts.

This talk will illustrate the application of dual focus methodology with reference to research conducted into the phenomenological repercussions of being positioned within dominant cancer discourses. One of the many challenges of being diagnosed with cancer is that it requires a person to make sense of their changed circumstances and to find meaning in an unwanted experience. The discursive resources for doing so are available within the surrounding culture and shape the way in which the person can experience themselves as someone with cancer. Taking up a position within cancer discourse can have a powerful emotional impact and it can prescribe (and proscribe) responses to the situation. This talk will demonstrate how dual focus methodology can help us trace the social and psychological effects of dominant cancer discourse by honouring subjective experience and its lived reality whilst acknowledging the role of language in making sense of, and thereby constructing, versions of experience.

Biography:

Carla Willig is Professor of Psychology at City, University of London, as well as a Counselling Psychologist in private practice. She has a long-standing interest in qualitative research methods and their usage in psychology, starting in the late 1980s when such approaches were still very much at the fringes within the discipline.She has used a variety of qualitative research methods in her own research, including grounded theory methodology (for her doctoral research in the 1980s), discourse analysis (throughout the 1990s), phenomenological methods (2000 onwards), and more recently qualitative metasynthesis (2016 onwards). She is currently looking at ways of researching the relationship between discourse and experience.

Carla's most recent publications include Qualitative Interpretation and Analysis in Psychology (McGraw Hill, 2012), Introducing Qualitative Research in Psychology (McGraw Hill, 3rd edition 2013),  and The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology (with Wendy Stainton Rogers; Sage Publications, 2nd edition 2017).