Conducting Interviews with Vulnerable Populations
Time & Location
About the Event
Dr Kate Summers will discuss conducting qualitative interviews with ‘vulnerable’ populations. Drawing on her own research with low-income populations in the UK, the seminar will focus on how ‘vulnerability’ should, or could, be defined, the implications of vulnerability for elements of research design, and in particular issues of researcher positionality and power.
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Dr Kate Summers is an LSE Fellow in Qualitative Methodology. She completed her PhD in the Department of Social Policy at the LSE in 2018. Kate has previously taught for the Social Policy Department, LSE Groups, and the LSE Summer School. Kate co-founded the early-career network, Money, Security and Social Policy (MSSP), and is a member of the Policy Advisory Group for the Women’s Budget Group.
Research interests
Kate’s research is concerned with poverty, economic inequality, and related social policies, in the UK context. She predominantly explores these issues using qualitative methods. Her doctoral research used qualitative depth interviews to explore how working-age benefit recipients understand and use their money, and in particular applied insights from new economic sociology. In ongoing work Kate is using a range of approaches to explore issues relating to: how money is experienced by those who are ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ in London; experiences of welfare reform in the UK; and the conceptualisation of richness.