The Use of Drawings in Social Change Research : Centering Participant Insights

This book is a comprehensive, practice-oriented guide to draw-and-write/talk methods, offering researchers a clear pathway for generating, analysing, and ethically working with multimodal visual–narrative data.

The Use of Drawings in Social Change Research is a practice-oriented guide to draw-and-write and draw-and-talk methods in qualitative research. It offers a clear, structured account of how drawing, paired with participant explanation, can be used to generate and interpret visual–narrative data in research concerned with social change. Grounded in applied work, the book demonstrates how these methods operate across diverse social, cultural, and institutional settings. The book provides step-by-step guidance on designing prompts, supporting participants, and analysing drawings alongside written or spoken accounts. It addresses ethical questions of consent, power, language, and dissemination, equipping readers to work responsibly with visual material. Contributions from scholars working internationally show how drawing practices can surface nuanced accounts of lived experience across age groups, disciplines, and research aims. The final section extends the methodology into emerging areas, including creative and embodied approaches, comics-based research, and AI-supported practices. This book is written for researchers, practitioners, and postgraduate students engaged in qualitative, arts-based, participatory, educational, health, or child-centred research, particularly those working on issues of social justice and social change.