I realised that recruiting LGBTQ+ students with open call-outs to small cohorts could seem targeted at individuals. No LGBTQ+ student organisation exists but there is an LGBTQ+ staff network, so I decided to focus on LGBTQIA+ tutors, who could reflect on their teaching and memories of student experiences. This had the collateral benefit of widening my network and lessening my isolation as an HPL.
A call-out for interview participants on the LGBTQ+ staff network offered an ethical way to access people self-defining as LGBTQ+ at UAL. The three responding participants were sufficient to allow identification of coherence and difference across their testimonies. This qualitative method corresponded with precepts of grounded theory, which is apt for investigation of social justice, roots analysis in social realities, accords with my small sample and anchors ‘agendas for future action’ (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005, p. 512). Participants were: two gay men and one non-binary trans person.
I conducted semi-structured interviews with the only three respondents. These were online, which was convenient, retained visual cues absent from telephone interviews (Irvine et al, 2012), allowed participants to control their privacy and facilitated automatic transcription. Pre-prepared questions were checked for ethical sensitivity, kept proceedings on track and ensured capture of particular experience (see below). It would have helped to pilot questions (Braun and Clarke, 2022, p. 28), but this wasn’t feasible. The interviews were hybrid in Kvale and Brinkmann’s (2009) categorisation, aiming for ‘conceptual clarification’ (p. 151), but also being ‘narrative’, focused on ‘the stories subjects tell’ (p. 153) and ‘discursive’ (p. 155) because of attention to power relations, comparison between responses and the informality of ‘conversational exchanges’ (Potter and Wetherall, 1987, p. 165).
I teach research methodologies but specialise in other methods. I wanted to engage with a key text on student reading lists (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009) and experience interview practices, to further inform my support of students. Oral history methods have also been significant in establishing queer histories (Porter and Weeks, 1991; Cole, 2000; Brighton OUR Story; Making Gay History; The Hall-Carpenter Archives).
One-to-one interviews were most appropriate for this sensitive topic. Participants may not have wanted to share their feelings in a focus group context (Braun and Clarke, 2022, p. 20) and been inhibited by professional relationships. A survey might have elicited freer responses, but the time between the call-out and our meeting also allowed for participant reflection. While the recruitment forum obscures the experience of less motivated LGBTQ+ staff, it was feasible and offered an outlet for participants to be and feel heard.
To analyse transcriptions,I deployed Reflexive Thematic Analysis, which evolves from deep familiarisation with material and the topic, through coding, to identifying and interpreting themes (Braun and Clarke, 2022). This allowed for my inductive participant centred approach, while acknowledging queer conceptual framing, which borders on deductive approaches.
I began coding my first interview transcription using tracked comments, but this micro-level detail became unfeasible (see fig. 1). I summarised participant statements, printed, cut up and muddled them, to disassociate them from the interview schedule and participant (fig. 2), before reorganising them into themes. I replicated this digitally, highlighting key words, which both evidenced semantic and implicit meaning (Braun and Clarke, 2022). Several re-writings ended with the summarised findings below.
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