Call for contributions to Object Methods in Qualitative Research

Submission deadline: 30 September 2026

To submit or for more information please email Kaylan Schwarz.

 

We invite chapter proposals for a book edited on object methods by Dr Kaylan C. Schwarz (University of Lethbridge) and Dr Nicole Brown (University College London). We seek interdisciplinary contributions from emerging and established scholars that engage with the question: How do qualitative researchers employ objects to generate knowledge and expand their methodological toolkits? 

 

This volume will highlight a spectrum of approaches of object methods.

In our own work, we have used methods like ‘object elicitation’ (Schwarz, 2023) and ‘identity boxes’ (Brown, 2019) to broaden and enhance the ways participants represent lived experiences within interview settings. However, object methods can encompass a diverse range of data collection and analysis techniques. Furthermore, object methods scholars may situate their work within several different methodological traditions including visual methods, arts-based methods, and creative methods. This collection is an opportunity to connect these distinct literature bases and showcase the complementarity between them. 

 

This collection will focus on methodological insights.

By ensuring some sustained focus on the various methodological processes and procedures of each study, we hope to enable readers to understand some precise ways object methods could be designed and enacted. Furthermore, we are interested in chapters that reflexively engage with the sensory, embodied, and affective affordances of objects, the ethical commitments and tensions that emerge in practice, and the successes and challenges researchers navigate along the way. 

 

Proposed chapters could explore (but are not limited to): 

• Objects as elicitation devices 
• Participant-selected and/or researcher-selected objects 
• Objects and embodied knowledge 
• Objects in visual, creative, and/or arts-based methods 
• Objects in participatory research 
• Digital, imagined, and/or absent objects 
• Objects and difficult-to-articulate experiences 
• Ethics of working with objects 
• Objects, memory, and biography 
• Objects, place, and spatial knowledge 
• Objects and relationality/rapport 
• Materiality and the more-than-human 
• Making and material experimentation as research 
• Objects as data (and what counts as data?) 
• Objects in analysis and interpretation 
• Objects as research outputs 

Chapter proposals should include author name, affiliation, a short bio, a chapter title, and a chapter abstract (300-400 words). Abstracts should clearly outline the topic/context of the study, the object method utilized, the theoretical frameworks that inform the approach, and the key methodological insights drawn from this work.

Please submit chapter proposals by 30 September 2026 to kaylan.schwarz@uleth.ca. 

We plan to submit the book proposal to an open access university press.