Over recent years there has been an increasing trend towards the adoption of interpretative and critical approaches to research within human geography. Qualitative methodologies offer a gateway to exploring the processes shaping our social worlds, allowing the researcher to engage with the lives and experiences of others through interviews, group discussions or participant observation.



This book is a critical introduction to qualitative methodologies for those preparing to undertake their own qualitative research, or who need to better understand the processes to evaluate and interpret the geographic research of others. Its aim is to demystify the process of doing qualitative methodologies through the discussion and illustration of research in practice. Each chapter presents an insight into the author's own experiences of using qualitative research across a number of projects, and reflects on the dilemmas, thought-processes and questions involved. The reader is invited to engage in the issues and debates thrown up by these examples and, in doing so, to deepen their understanding of the research processes which may be applied to their own projects.