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Digital Archives & Live Research

The project was conceived and designed as a ‘born digital’ study, taking on elements of ‘live research’. There are two aspects to this; digital archiving of research materials for future use and online documentation, creation and sharing of research in ‘real time’.

One aim is to create a digital record of the research process as it is happening. This includes the nuts and bolts of doing the research, accumulating narratives and perspectives from participant interviews over time that helps to show a longitudinal project in action, as well as emerging insights and reflections on ethical, methodological and interpretive issues of undertaking research in this manner. A key interest is the ways in which digital and real time research might amplify, obscure or introduce new methodological possibilities and challenges.

The architecture of a research website affords a ‘joined-up’ sense of the different layers of the project – the visual, textual, historical records and current social demographics of the school communities; narrative accounts of interviews and documenting of research approach. It also offers a view on to the durational and temporal dimensions of research processes in general, and as they unfold in this particular longitudinal and cross-generational study.

The second online aspect is that records from the research are being digitally archived for future use and review by other researchers, now and into the future. During the time that the actual project is in process, summaries of the interviews and project updates will be available on this website

At the conclusion of the project, and subject to participant consent, anonymised copies of full transcripts will be digitally archived and deposited in an archives service, for future use by researchers, with appropriate ethical, access and storage protocols in place.

The audio recordings will also become part of the historic record. Subject to participant consent, the raw non-anonymised audio files would also be deposited with the archive service and could be made available to interested researchers on application, subject to standard ethical clearances and time lapse (50 years) after completion of project