Encountering Ourselves: A Critically Reflexive Practice Research Project

Abstract

In this chapter we present our study design and discuss some of the challenges of implementation in the hope that the lessons we learned might be of use to others. We consider how critical psychological practice research, which is a particular version of action research, combined with an ethnographic orientation can make a special contribution to prison studies. In describing the design and implementation of our study, we hope to inspire future researchers to collaboratively compare prisons across dynamic dimensions. First we introduce the theoretical inspiration of the study, then explore some of the strengths and weaknesses we experienced in practice. In addition, we present the research teams attached to the three NGOs and present an overview of the data collected and used in subsequent chapters.