Popularizing Research

Vannini (communication and culture, Royal Roads U., Canada) brings together 31 chapters that show students, academics, and professional researchers ways to popularize research in the social sciences and humanities for lay, media, and popular audiences. Chapters are organized by specific media or genres of research production: film and video (particularly documentary); visual media and graphics (photovoice, cartoons, and poster exhibits); exhibits and installations; audio (from radio to music to digital documentaries); periodicals (op-eds, ethnodramas, and autoethnography); books and reports; dialogues through web cafes, online conversations, and Web 2.0; performance (slam poetry, performance ethnography and autoethnography, and playback theatre); and the news media. They outline the focus of the research, why it was popularized, why certain media and genres were used, what lessons were learned in the process, and how audiences responded. Additional project material and examples are on the companion website. Contributors are academics, students, and professionals working in communication, education, sociology, anthropology, and other fields. There is no index. Annotation Ac2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Phillip Vannini is Professor in the School of Communication & Culture at Royal Roads University and Canada Research Chair in Innovative Learning and Public Ethnography. He is author/editor of eight books, including Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society (edited with J. Patrick Williams, 2009), The Cultures of Alternative Mobilities: Routes Less Travelled (2009), Material Culture and Technology in Everyday Life: Ethnographic Approaches (Peter Lang, 2009), and The Senses in Self, Society, and Culture: A Sociology of the Senses (authored with Dennis Waskul and Simon Gottschalk, 2011).