UGA Qualitative Research Program

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UGA Qualitative Research Program

This page features the Qualitative Research Program at the University of Georgia

09/02/2026

Today we're celebrating a recent graduate from our PhD in Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methodologies PhD Program. Dr. Ashley Williams defended her dissertation titled "Black Q***r Feminist Alchemy: A Codex of Sociogenic Conditions of Knowing and Being" this past spring. Her committee members included Dr. Giovanni Dazzo (chair), Dr. Maureen Flint, and Dr. Juanita Johnson Bailey.

Black Q***r Feminist Alchemy: A Codex of Sociogenic Conditions of Knowing and Being articulates a counterhumanist paradigm and methodological praxis that begins from the premise that Black life does not require validation within dominant epistemological systems to be recognized as fully human. Rather than positioning Black experience as an object of study, this work proceeds from Black q***r ways of knowing as already generative, sufficient, and in excess of the categories that have historically sought to contain them. In doing so, it refuses the terms through which humanness has been narrowly defined and reorients inquiry toward the conditions through which knowing and being become possible. Drawing on Sylvia Wynter’s sociogenic principle, this codex develops Sociogenic Condition and Fractal Threading as conceptual and methodological articulations for engaging these conditions. Together, they attend to how humanness is produced, lived, and felt across history, relation, and everyday life, while offering a mode of inquiry that moves through recursion, relation, and return rather than linear progression or resolution. Within this orientation, knowledge is not extracted or stabilized, but emerges through sustained engagement with lived experience, memory, and the ongoing movement of meaning. By centering relational, affective, and lived modes of knowing, this work contributes a paradigm and methodological praxis to qualitative research that reimagines how knowledge is produced, shared, and lived, expanding the conditions under which inquiry itself becomes possible.

Follow more of Dr. Williams work on her ORCID profile here: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-3629-3090

09/01/2026

Calling all UGA QUAL affiliate faculty! Join us for a pedagogy brown bag on Cultivating Qualitative Thinking in Online Courses, where we’ll share questions, challenges, and strategies from our online qualitative teaching.

📅 September 9
🕦 11:30 AM–12:30 PM
📍 Rivers Crossing Sunroom

Bring your lunch, your ideas, and the things you’re still figuring out. We hope to see you there!

08/31/2026

Happy ! Today we're featuring an article by affiliate faculty Dr. Ginny Boss, along with co-collaborator Sohyeon Bae, titled "Dispossession of Student Affairs: Epistemic (In)justice in Student Success Efforts at Research Universities" published in the Journal of College Student Development

The purpose of this institutional ethnography was to uncover the ruling relations shaping student success efforts at large research universities. Using this critical qualitative approach, we examined the tensions between university leaders' efforts to enhance student success and the persistent disparities in retention, progression, and graduation rates for Black and Latinx students at Prestige University. Our findings reveal that economic logics (neoliberalism, marketization, and academic capitalism) intersect with testimonial and hermeneutic injustices, undermining equitable support for these students. Prestige-seeking behaviors and traditional organizational patterns at Prestige U not only marginalize the needs of Black and Latinx students but also dispossess student affairs professionals who are central to implementing holistic support strategies. This study calls for reevaluating success metrics and institutional practices to create a more inclusive and just environment for marginalized students and the professionals who support them.

https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2025.a970177

08/26/2026

This semester we're starting a new series where we highlight recent graduates of our PhD program (Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methodologies) and our Interdisciplinary Qualitative Studies Certificate. We are kicking it off highlighting ✧˖°Dr. Amanda Deaton ✧˖° who defended her dissertation titled "Generative AI and the Reconfiguration of Creativity: The Beautiful, the Uncanny, the (Post)Human" this past summer.
Her committee was chaired by Dr. Maureen Flint with committee members Dr. Kathy Roulston, Dr. Melissa Freeman, and Dr. Rebecca Hallman Martini

Her four-article dissertation explored generative artificial intelligence, storytelling, and creativity through a posthuman theoretical framework. Across the project, she looks at how human-AI collaborations complicate assumptions about authorship, knowledge production, creativity, subjectivity, and relationality. Drawing on posthuman theory, particularly the work of Rosi Braidotti, alongside concepts from assemblage theory, arts-based inquiry, and qualitative methodology, this dissertation approaches creativity as emergent, entangled, and relational among humans, their technological creations, memories, affects, and environments. This project explores what is possible when creativity is understood as distributed rather than asking if AI-generated work is “truly” original. Across all four articles, Deaton draws on a variety of qualitative methods, including narrative, arts-based, and post-qualitative inquiry, and incorporates creative vignettes, poetic inquiry, reflective writing, visual generation, and collaborative experimentation with AI systems. The project overall takes an experimental approach, arguing that generative AI should not be understood through binaries of celebration or critique. Rather, its disruptions, limitations, and uncanny qualities invite slower, more relational ways of thinking about creativity, pedagogy, ethics, and what it means to create and learn alongside increasingly human-like technologies.

Check out more of Amanda's work linked on her ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-1421-1427

08/24/2026

It's a new semester here at UGA and we're kicking off our series with some of the articles and publications from our fabulous alum, affiliate faculty, current students, and faculty that we haven't had a chance to highlight yet.

Today, we're highlighting an article by faculty Dr. Melissa Freeman along with graduate Cristina Valencia Mazzanti titled "The borders of theory: Towards an artful ontology of knowing in qualitative research" published in Qualitative Research. This article considers the ontology of theory as a shaping phenomenon in qualitative research by opening up its intersection with artistic dimensions of knowing and knowledge. We argue that the plurality of practices and perspectives for research hinges on what theory is understood to be. Thus, rather than approaching theory as something predefined, we draw on conceptualizations of the experience of art to articulate the being of theory as an aesthetic renewal of a shared human movement of becoming. We then illuminate theory's potential as a multidimensional artful being by engaging with a subset of photographs of street art collected in Colombia.

https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941221096595

06/12/2026

We hope you join us later today for Dr. Anani Vasquez's talk on Writing Qualitatively!

These conversations will explore qualitative writing as a scholarly, creative, and methodological practice and offer opportunities for engagement with nationally recognized scholars in the field. The series is free and open to all. Registration is available via the QR codes on the flyer or at the links below. For additional information, please contact Dr. Maureen Flint at [email protected].

Dr. Ananí Vasquez, Friday June 12th 1:00PM – 2:00PM EDT - https://bit.ly/UGAQL-SU2602

06/08/2026

We hope to see you tomorrow for Dr.
Esther Ohito's talk!

These conversations will explore qualitative writing as a scholarly, creative, and methodological practice and offer opportunities for engagement with nationally recognized scholars in the field. The series is free and open to all. Registration is available via the QR codes on the flyer or at the links below. For additional information, please contact Dr. Maureen Flint at [email protected].
Dr. Esther Ohito, Tuesday June 9th 10:00AM – 11:00AM EDT - https://bit.ly/UGAQL-SU2601

06/02/2026

Join the UGA Qual Lab this June for Writing Qualitatively, a special summer speaker series offered in conjunction with QUAL 8750e: Qualitative Writing. Dr. Esther Ohito (Rutgers University) will present on Tuesday, June 9, from 10:00–11:00 a.m. EDT, followed by Dr. Ananí Vásquez (Arizona State University) on Friday, June 12, from 1:00–2:00 p.m. EDT. These conversations will explore qualitative writing as a scholarly, creative, and methodological practice and offer opportunities for engagement with nationally recognized scholars in the field. The series is free and open to all. Registration is available via the QR codes on the flyer or at the links below. For additional information, please contact Dr. Maureen Flint at [email protected].
Dr. Esther Ohito, Tuesday June 9th 10:00AM – 11:00AM EDT - https://bit.ly/UGAQL-SU2601
Dr. Ananí Vasquez, Friday June 12th 1:00PM – 2:00PM EDT - https://bit.ly/UGAQL-SU2602

05/04/2026

This check out a new article by faculty Dr. Giovanni Dazzo and co-authors, published in Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies.

Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) has often been characterized as a meaningful way of including young people in research about and for them. Much has been written about the need to develop trusting relationships between adult and youth researchers in this process. These types of research relationships take time to develop authentically and we see a need for that relationship-building time to be built into research designs and timelines. At the same time, in our experience working with the Youth Research Council in Northern Virginia, USA, we have seen youth researchers express desires to use “rapid” research methods, such as hallway interviews, text messaging, speak-back surveys, and video testimonials to gather data from peers. The purpose of this article is to explore these tensions, to uncover the privilege of what have been called slow ontologies, and to offer recommendations for other youth-led research teams.

https://doi.org/10.1177/15327086231224757

04/27/2026

Why does teaching educational research matter? This we're highlighting an article by student Hana Ameli along with faculty Dr. Kathy Roulston, asking just this question.

Published in the inagural issue of Teaching Educational Research Methods, in this paper, we—two non-native scholars working in the United States—share how our different personal, educational, and professional journeys led us to care deeply about research methods and their teaching. Drawing on biographical experiences from Iran and Australia, we describe how learning and teaching qualitative research reshaped the way we understand rigor, evidence, and human experience. Through our stories as a doctoral student and a long-time methods instructor, we show that research quality depends not only on technical skill, but on careful alignment between theory, methodology, and methods, as well as on ethical and philosophical reflection. We argue that teaching research methodologies is not simply about providing tools, but about cultivating thoughtful, responsible researchers who can engage with complexity, uncertainty, and the lived realities of others.

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https://coe.uga.edu/academics/concentrations/qualitative-research

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