The path through the library: Reading for post qualitative research

“The library is lifeless until we begin to trace a path through it … The path carved by reading establishes a territory. It animates thought through the connections that it affords: with other texts, with inchoate ideas, with matter, with memories,” Professor Emerita Maggie MacLure.

REDI was pleased to host Maggie MacLure, Professor Emerita in the Faculty of Health and Education at Manchester Metropolitan University, as a visiting scholar in November this year. During her visit Professor MacLure presented a seminar, ‘The path through the library: Reading for post qualitative research’, exploring some of the characteristics of ‘intensive reading’.

In this thought-provoking presentation, Professor MacLure discussed some examples of intensive reading in her own research, tracing the ways in which unanticipated paths had opened and divided, and the implications for the thinking and doing of the research. She reflected on paths not taken, and how some influential texts, beloved by others, might not ‘work’ for an individual reader. She also considered the obligation to read ‘intentionally’ as well as intensively.

Watch the seminar

References

Deleuze, G. (1995). Negotiations 1972-1990 (M. Joughin, Trans). Columbia University Press.

MacLure, M. (2024). “Something comes through or it doesn’t”: intensive reading in post-qualitative inquiry. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 37(6), 1647–1654.