"Qualitative Inquiry and the Politics of Evidence"

The Third International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry will take place at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from May 2-5, 2007. Building on Jan Morse's inaugural keynote address in 2004, the theme of the Congress is "Qualitative Inquiry and the Politics of Evidence." Participants will explore the politics of evidence and truth and what these terms mean for qualitative inquiry in this new century. If we as qualitative researchers do not define these terms for ourselves, someone else will.

Questions to be considered include: What is truth? What is evidence? What counts as evidence? How is evidence evaluated? How can evidence or facts be "fixed" to fit social policy? How can qualitative research inform the policy-making process? How is qualitative evidence to be represented, discounted or judged to be unreliable, false or incorrect? What is a fact? What are the different discourses - law, medicine, history, cultural or performance studies - that define qualitative evidence?

What is true, or false, is determined by the criteria that are used to judge good and bad evidence. The Congress will consider multiple forms of evidence- or scientifically based research (SBR) models. It also will consider different perspectives and what evidence means in these perspectives, including postpositivism and poststructualism, as well as indigenous, democratic, postcolonial, queer, feminist, performative and participatory models of truth and critical inquiry.

Additionally, borrowing from our colleagues in Manchester (UK) believe it is useful to conceptualize research as subversive activity, as work that unsettles, challenges and contests existing social and educational formations. Subversive research resists work that is at ease with the methodological preconceptions of federal and private funding bodies. Subversive scholars seek discourses of resistance that contest current notions of truth, justice, healing, health, schooling, identity, learning and teaching.

Half-day (morning and afternoon) preconference professional workshops will be held on the first day of the three-day Congress (May 2- 5). The Congress also will consist of keynote, plenary, featured, regular, and poster sessions. There will be an opening reception and barbeque as well as a closing old-fashioned Midwest cook-out.

We invite your submission of paper, poster and session proposals. Session and paper submissions will be accepted online only from September 1 until November 16, 2006. Conference and workshop registration will begin December 1, 2006. To learn more about the Third International Congress and how to participate, please email info@qi2007.org. 

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Sponsor Links:

Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program
Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities
Bureau of Educational Research
The Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
Gender & Women's Studies Program
Department of Advertising
College of Communications
Center for Qualitative Inquiry
The Education and Social Research Institute (ESRI),
Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Sage Publications
The International Association of Educators
International Journal of Progressive Education
Turkish Journal of Educational Policy Analysis and Strategic Research
Center for Global Studies
SSSI
LeftCoast Press
Institute of Communications Research
Native American House/American Indian Studies(NAH/AIS)
The Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities(IPRH)