Post by Mary Bosworth, Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford. This post is the first instalment of the Border Criminologies Themed Week on Research Methodologies,

It is no accident that we decided to start our themed blog post series with one on research methodologies. All too often relegated to appendices of books or to the ‘boring bit’ of graduate and undergraduate training, how we do our research, who we do it with and the kinds of decisions we make along the way are, in fact, central to academic inquiry. Most obviously, decisions we make about research methods shape our findings. They also raise a series of compelling, and sometimes, unsettling, ethical and moral questions. For those of us working with vulnerable populations (and who in criminology is not?), such matters can be messy, painful and unnerving. Remaining silent about them can generate personal anxieties and intellectual confusion. What we doing here? What is the point of our work? Are we getting things right? READ MORE