The University of Manchester is a modern civic university, built to serve an industrial city and its people. Through Methods@Manchester, we collaborate with Keele University, Lancaster University, the University of Liverpool, and the University of Lancashire as part of Methods North West, a partnership committed to advancing methodological innovation across the region. Together we bring you the 2026 Methods Fair a one-day free event providing researchers with the opportunity to connect and present, sharing ideas and further developing skills and knowledge. The Fair takes place at the University of Manchester campus on Wednesday, 27 May.
Methods for Change: Connecting People, Places, and Purpose
For the theme of the 2026 Fair, we invite you to consider, acknowledge and build on the importance of connections and partnerships in research, reflecting on how these inform and impact your research methods.
- How do connections - to people, to place, to communities, to purpose – help shape the social science/humanities methods you employ?
- How and when are these connections integral to discovery, impact, and social responsibility?
- What does this mean for how we understand rigour, how we share power, steward data responsibly, navigate ethics, and translate insight into action?
Complementary to this theme we are delighted to share early news of our keynote speakers. Professor Sarah Marie Hall, University of Manchester and Sally Bonnie FRSA -Founder and Director of Inspiring Futures Partnership CIC will be reflecting on Friendship, Creativity and Collaboration.
Note the Fair's theme provides an orientation for some of the Fair's sessions and activities, but there will be content across the full scope of humanities and social science methods.
METHODS FAIR PROGRAMME AT A GLANCE
Morning Session
All sessions take place in Alliance Manchester Business School Building, University of Manchester
- 9.00-9.25am: Registration (with coffee & pastries)
- 9.30am: Welcome - Prof Emma Banister, Director of Methods@Manchester
- 9.40am: Keynote – Professor Sarah Marie Hall, University of Manchester and Sally Bonnie FRSA - Founder and Director of Inspiring Futures Partnership CIC
- 10.30 -12.00: Lightning Talks (2 parallel streams)
- 12-1.15 pm: Lunch & poster session (DVO tour 12-1pm or 1.15-2.15pm)
- 1.15 - 2.45pm: Workshop session 1
- 2.45- 3pm: break
- 3 - 4.30: Workshop session 2
Afternoon Session
Workshops are still being finalised, but we’re bringing an exciting lineup including Lego Serious Play, zine-making, and many more creative, hands-on sessions designed to spark ideas and get you fully involved.
DETAILED FAIR PROGRAMME
Professor Emma Banister, Director of Methods@Manchester will first provide a brief welcome and outline of the day before handing over to our Keynote Speakers
Keynote
Sarah Marie Hall and Sally Bonnie
Friendship, Collaboration and Creativity: Weaving Community-Led Research
To see takes time. To have a friend takes time. But that time, that fierce attention we give each other, can generate something extraordinary. Sarah Marie Hall and Sally Bonnie explore how friendship serves as both foundation and catalyst for transformative community-academic collaboration. Drawing on feminist ideas, lived experience with Inspire Women Oldham, and their own partnership journey, they examine how relationships based on mutual attention and care can generate creative research methods and shift power dynamics. This is a conversation about friendships that refuse to accept the world's assessment of worth, collaborations that challenge who gets to create knowledge, and creativity that moves between people like a living thing. This keynote will demonstrate how:
- Friendships that pay "fierce attention" create generative capacity beyond individual contributions
- Community emerges slowly through networks of trust, not predetermined structures
- Creative methods embody relational principles of mutuality and care
- Women's friendships challenge systems and reshape who gets to create knowledge
Through storytelling and reflection, Sarah and Sally reveal how research rooted in friendship produces knowledge that is more robust, more real, more transformative. Expect personal narrative woven with feminist ideas, real examples of research reimagined as joyful and relational, and insights about what becomes possible.
Key note speaker bios
Sally Bonnie FRSA- Founder/Director Inspire Women Oldham (Inspiring Futures Partnership CIC) If my journey working alongside the community were a tin of beans, the ingredients would read: "Contains: 100% grassroots determination, generous portions of relationship and friendship, creative methods (podcasting, slow stitch, zines—no filler), movement building roots, friendship, joy and care (essential nutrients), a pinch of strategic pushback against the powerful who try to define us, therapeutic processing, women's voices (the main ingredient), collaboration (not extraction), and 34 years of proof that community knowledge matters. May contain traces of exhaustion from carrying vision. Warning: may cause disruption to traditional research systems. Best served: as collaborators, not subjects." Pink Wig wearing optional but fun"
Sarah Marie Hall - Professor in Human Geography, University of Manchester I am a feminist economic geographer with interests in everyday life and economic change, care and social reproduction, and feminist praxis. In my current project, Austerity and Altered Life-Courses, I work alongside a range of creative and community partners to co-create spaces, stories and solidarities about the impact that austerity has on the futures people can dream about. I began my methodological training as an ethnographer, and now blend this approach with creative, participatory and collaborative methods.
Lightning Talks
10-30am - 12.00pm (parallel streams)
The Lightning Talks are designed as conversation starters. Each presenter will have just five minutes to present their work - and you are of course welcome to give a briefer presentations! While there is limited time for questions within the sessions themselves, we envisage that audience members will also seek out presenters for fuller discussions during the Fair and/or follow up with them separately. Talks are organised in two parallel streams and presentations are scheduled with respect to a number of approximate themes. Programming these has been an inexact process and it has not been possible to group all presentations in a way that will necessarily suit everyone. In view of this, and the rich variety of presentations included in the programme, please do feel free to move between rooms/sessions, but we ask that you do this in a discreet/sensitive way (e.g. at the end of someone's presentation rather than midway through). We do ask that presenters stay for the duration of their theme in case of any questions.
Lightning Talks - Stream 1
Lightning Talks - Stream 2
Lunch and poster presentations (12.00 - 13.15)
During the Fair there will be an extended lunch and poster session when poster presenters should ensure they are available to discuss their posters and interact with other conference attendees (the posters will be displayed throughout the Fair).
Posters
Jennifer Buckley, University of Manchester – "Finding and Using Data: Free E‑learning Modules” Vermon Washington, Hertie School - “Small light today, big light tomorrow: Electricity Access in Liberia” Laia Nualart Moratalla, Autonomous University of Barcelona - “Qualitative GIS as a Methodological Link in Socio-Spatial Research: Integrating Interviews and Observation” Zhuo Wang, University of Manchester – "Digital Subjectivity as Affective Practice: An Autoethnography of a Researcher-Influencer's Platformed Journey” Joanna Hayes, University of Liverpool - “Connecting the dots: Using ripple effects mapping to evaluate the role of community connectors” Maria Mercedes Fleitas Delgado, University of Manchester– "Decomposition of Group Differentials” Ganapathy Muthuthandavam , University of Liverpool – "How Environmental Policies Regulate Sustainability in Supply Chains? A Synthesis of Responses to develop an Enactment-Paradox Framework” Alaa AlSaffar, University of Leicester - “Emotions and Bodies as Change-agents in Researching Organisations” Cesar Vicencio Vega, University of Manchester – “Drawing the Discard: Layered Visual Methods for Researching Extractive Urbanism in Chuquicamata, Chile” Brogan Pritchard, University of Manchester - “What does the body know?: Body-mapping and embodied inquiry in feminist prison health research” Simon Rudkin, University of Manchester - “Persistent Homology and the Dynamic Social Systems” Gideon Olanrewaju, University of Manchester - “Divergent Voices in a Shared Inquiry: Design-Based Research, Displaced Teachers, and the Future of Development Knowledge Production” Oluwatosin Ajibola, University of Manchester - “A Socio-Legal Methodology for Investigating Black Maternal Health in England” Rafaella Konstantinou, University of Liverpool - “Strategic Stakeholder Management and Greenwashing in the Fashion Industry” Shivani Mishra, University of Liverpool - “How Do You Review a Moving Target? Conducting an Integrative Literature Review on AI in Supply Chains”
Workshops
Data Visualisation Observatory
Explore the Data Visualisation Observatory with Dr. Qudamah Quboa. Please note the DVO tour is pre-sign up only which you will need to do at the Methods Fair registration desk on the day.
Session 1 workshops: 1.15 pm - 2.45 pm
- More-than-human Methods Workshop, Dr Catherine Oliver (Lancaster University)
- Zine Making Workshop: Tackling Imposter Syndrome, hosted by Inspire Women Oldham with Sally Bonnie (FRSA, Founder and Director of Inspiring Futures Partnership CIC) and Sarah Marie Hall (University of Manchester)
Session 2 workshops: 3.00 pm - 4.30 pm
- Getting Your Foot on the Funding Ladder - Opportunities for Methods North West, Dr. Stuart Shields (University of Manchester)
- Participatory Research using Lego Serious Play (LSP), Dr. Abhishek Behl and Dr Swati Garg (Keele University)
- 'Draw your Research' Group, Mark Shtanov (University of Manchester) and Zoe Cox (Manchester Metropolitan University)
- Lost and Found In Translation Series: which language/s?, Facilitators: Dylan Bradbury (Manchester) Daniel Baldin Machado (Manchester) Putri Kristimanta (Manchester) Bulbul Prakash (Manchester); Guest speaker: Rebecca Tipton (Centre for Translation & Intercultural Studies, MLC, Manchester); Academic Support Lead: Ruth Abou Rached (Arabic & Middle Eastern Studies, MLC, Manchester)
Registration
Whether you're presenting or just attending, don’t miss out and secure your spot at our Methods Fair by registering via the button below! We can’t wait to welcome you and see you there soon!
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