About

Methods Lab Is an experimental research collective.

The aim is to make social research responsive to social life, to bring it alive.

Methods Lab builds a laboratory to stimulate creative debate as well as to institute examples of the ways in which the practice of sociology is changing, what social research should look like today, and how sociology can best respond to the demands of users of social research.

Goldsmiths Sociology is committed to developing inventive ways of doing sociology. Methods Lab constructs a laboratory for the practice of our sociological imaginations.

We do this in a range of ways: invited speakers, practice research workshops, collaborations with artists and cultural and creative groups, exhibitions and publications

Recent publications from those involved with Methods Lab include:

Coleman, Rebecca, Jungnickel Kat and Nirmal Power (ed) (2024) How To Do Social Research With. Goldsmiths Press. This new edited collection (due out Dec 2023) is collectively made by members of the Goldsmiths Sociology Department.

Back, Les and Puwar, Nirmal (eds) (2012) Live Methods, London: Wiley.

Coleman, Rebecca, Page, Tara and Palmer, Helen (eds) (2019) ‘Feminist New Materialist Practice: The Mattering of Method’, Special Issue of MAI: Journal of Feminism and Visual Culture.

Hjorth, Larissa, Harris, Anne, Jungnickel, Kat and Coombs, Gretchen (2020) Creative Practice Ethnographies, Lexington Press.

Jungnickel, Kat (ed) (2020) Transmissions: Critical Tactics for Making and Communicating Research, MIT Press. Project website

Jungnickel, Kat. (2018) Bikes and Bloomers: Victorian women inventors and their extraordinary cycle wear, Goldsmiths Press. Project website

Lury, Celia and Wakeford, Nina (eds) (2012) Inventive Methods, London: Routledge.

Methods Lab activities link with and feed into much of the Undergraduate and Postgraduate teaching in the Sociology Department, and most especially the MA in Visual Sociology.

For more on Methods Lab, including an archive of activities pre-2019, see our linked website.