Analysing Research Materials and Data: highlights from the DCU Doctoral Summer School, 18-22 August 2025
This month, DCU hosted the PARTICIPATE Doctoral Summer School, which is our third and last major network-wide training event in the project. It is always a joy to see the Doctoral Candidates meet up as they arrive from their respective host countries, catching up on the latest news and happy for the opportunity to spend time together. Delays with issuing visas have presented some challenges for non-EU researchers in this project, and unfortunately Shan and Anastasiia were unable to attend in person. However, they joined all the sessions by Zoom and we will catch up with them socially when they arrive next month for their non-academic secondments in Dublin.
The purpose of this Summer School was to focus on data analysis, as most Doctoral Candidates have now completed – or almost completed – data collection. The programme was designed by Prof. Dorte-Marie Søndergaard and Prof. Debbie Ging with the specific objective of encouraging the Doctoral Candidates to think about different approaches to data analysis, confront obstacles and rethink disciplinary orthodoxies, not only in relation to their own research projects but also more generally in their future careers.
We were honoured to have Prof. Dorothy Espelage open the Summer School with a masterclass titled ‘What is not in the Methods Section: Challenges, Successes, and Lessons Learned from Researching Bullying/Cyberbullying Prevention among Children and Adolescents.’ Prof. Espelage is William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of Education at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a world-renowned expert in bullying, youth aggression, and teen dating violence, as well as the recipient of the APA Lifetime Achievement Award in Prevention Science. She gave a frank, riveting and highly compelling account of her research career to date, emphasising the value of transformative research and the need to visit schools and talk to young people to fully understand the realities of all types of bullying.
Prof. Dorte-Marie Søndergaard kicked off Day 2 with a lecture titled ‘Working with theory in qualitative analyses: Analytical readings of research material’. Drawing on Adele Clarke’s situational analysis as well as Judith Butler’s work on subjectification and the negotiation of normativities, this presentation encouraged participants to develop analytical questions via encounters between research material and theory. Using vivid examples from the Danish schoolyard, Prof. Søndergaard brought to life the complex dynamics and entanglements inherent in the interaction between students and adults in schools, classes, and friendship groups. Participants then broke into three working groups, led by Dr. Sinan Aşçı (quantitative methods), Prof. Debbie Ging (mixed methods), and Prof. Søndergaard and Prof. Audrey Bryan (qualitative methods) to discuss challenges they are encountering in their respective projects, and to brainstorm solutions to these challenges.
Day 3 started with a lecture by Prof. Debbie Ging titled ‘Synergy and synthesis: working with quantitative and qualitative data using examples from recent research’. In it she challenged and unpacked some of the assumptions about quantitative and qualitative data, arguing that the division can be unproductive, and that we might better think of mixed-methods research as hybrid, multidimensional or multi-nodal. Using examples from recent projects, Prof. Ging illustrated the complex interplay between surveys, focus groups and interviews and how apparent contradictions are important findings in themselves. In the last lecture of the Summer School, Prof. Audrey Bryan presented on ‘Analysing and Writing for Impact’, an inspiring exploration of the importance of transformative inquiry, pragmatic reflexivity, positionality and transparency at all stages of the research process. Prof. Bryan highlighted the need for intellectual honesty, self-reflexivity and empathy for the reader in good academic witing, urging researchers not to ignore but rather embrace anomalies and contradictions in their findings. This compelling presentation gave participants rich insights into planning and publishing impactful work. Again, in the afternoon, the break-out groups continued to workshop their individual projects and to grapple with practical methodological and data-analytic challenges.
On the final day of the Summer School, Jane McGarrigle and Tracy Hogan from Webwise gave an excellent practical workshop in ‘Designing Educational Materials.’ Webwise, the Irish Internet Safety Awareness Centre, is an Associate Partner of the PARTICIPATE project and their experience in producing educational and awareness campaigns gave us vital insights into the complex processes behind the design process. These insights will be applied to the various non-academic outputs, such as toolkits and internet safety recommendations for parents, that are being produced by the PARTICIPATE project. Now that the project is well underway – data collection almost complete, and the practical outputs are taking shape – there was a strong sense of collective progress. While our working days were intensive, we also took time to unwind in the evenings and celebrate this progress with good food, wine and conversation.
More from PARTICIPATE
Comprehensive Perspective on Cyberbullying Research
SPACES OF HOPE: Searching for a Place in Academia as an Outsider
Reflections from the World Anti-Bullying Forum 2025: Research, Connection, and New Perspectives
