International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry at the University of Illinois

The International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI 2014) titled Qualitative Inquiry and the Politics of Research was held at the University of Illinois between the 22nd and 24th May. Representing JCU's CNMR were A/Professor Jane Mills, Professor Melanie Birks, Ms Adele Baldwin, Ms Ylona Chun Tie and Ms Jennifer Chamberlain - Salaun. There were 1200 registrants at the conference, which makes it the largest qualitative research conference in the world.

Commencing on Wednesday, members attended a wide range of half day workshops by renown qualitative researchers including Professor Johnny Saldana, Professor Jan Morse, Professors Greg Dimitriadis & George Kamberelis amongst others. The workshops offered a valuable opportunity for both experienced and novice researchers to interact and learn from experts in their particular field. That evening, the Poster Exhibition included two findings papers from recent CNMR publications. Professor Birks and A/Professor Mills then attended a SAGE Publications Book Signing for their recent publication Qualitative Methodology: A practical guide.

On Thursday and Friday, members presented 10 conference papers that mainly focused on methodology and methods. There were several highlights, the first of which was Dr Intansari Nurjannah's paper on when to translate in a grounded theory study. Ylona Chun Tie gave a presentation on practical philosophy which generated a lot of interesting discussion. Jennifer Chamberlain Salaun presented her PhD findings 'unplugged' due to a technical failure. This session ended up being mesmerising as Jennifer sat and told the story of her grounded theory to a very warm and receptive audience. Thursday, saw the CNMR Panel which included five presentations from current PhD candidates. This was an excellent session which took the theme of methods of data generation and collection in a grounded theory study. Adele Baldwin was a mainstay with her comprehensive argument against the centrality of interviews in a qualitative study, and the identification of a range of different options that could result in a deeper data set.

Overall, the conference provided many intellectual challenges for participants as researchers presented an enormous variety of ideas, findings and research designs. The two keynotes from Professor Patti Lather and Professor Uwe Flick were thought provoking in relation to where we go next with Qualitative Data Analysis 2.0. All of the attendees were very grateful for the opportunity to attend such and event and plan to feedback to the College of Health Sciences over the next 6 months through both informal presentations and newsletter items.

http://research.jcu.edu.au/cnmr/news-and-events/news/international-congress-of-qualitative-inquiry-at-the-university-of-illinois