DRMC's annual methods lecture, in honour and memory of Professor Christine Merrell, who was a Professor of Education and Deputy Executive Dean (Research) for the Faculty of Social Sciences, will be taking place on:
The Lecture is titled 'Large Language Models and the Future of Qualitative Research' by Professor Susan Halford, Professor of Sociology, University of Bristol and Professor Leslie Carr, Professor of Web Science, University of Southampton (visiting lecturer to the University of Bristol).
The lecture will be followed by a Q&A session and the DRMC Picturing Research Competition winners will be awarded.
This is a face-to-face lecture.
Location - Room ER142, Elvet Riverside, New Elvet, Durham University Durham DH1 3JT
There will be a drinks reception at Delta Hotels Durham Royal County Hotel from 6.30pm
Click Here to register for this event
The closing date to complete this form will be Wednesday 6th May 2026, 6pm.
Large Language Models and the Future of Qualitative Research
The growth of Large Language Models has prompted widespread claims that these ‘tools’ will transform the future of qualitative research. Overall, the message is that qualitative researchers should equip themselves for a fast-approaching future, or risk being replaced. In this talk we examine these claims theoretically, drawing on work in the sociology of futures, and the social life of methods. Pulling these two elements together, we re-frame the current debate about LLMs in qualitative research as a more or less intentional set of future making claims mobilized through a nascent re-assembling of the dominant methodological apparatus. We explore these claims practically, reporting on our own experiments with LLMs. In distinction from the dominant approach, which tends to carefully controlled lab experiments to test LLM capabilities, we report on a ‘live’ project, paying attention to the actors, practices and relations that emerge when LLMs become part of the research assemblage. This draws attention to the notable and significant disjunction between the emergent future claimed for qualitative research in the dominant narrative and our own experience on the other. One way of describing this is to say that two different enactments of the future are in the making. Our conclusion is not to reject the use of LLMs, but rather to change the terms of the debate fully aware of its performative consequences.
Originally trained as a Geographer, Susan Halford is Professor of Sociology and has worked across the social and engineering sciences for the past 15 years. At the University of Bristol she is co-Director of the ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures and was formerly founding co-Director of the Bristol Digital Futures Institute (2019-2022), and founding Director of the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton (2012-2018). Susan's present research focusses on the practices and politics of digital data, artefacts and expertise. She has made key interventions on the hybrid workspace, digital inequality, the semantic web, social media analytics, big data practices and - most recently - sociodigital futures. She is also well-known for her work as an organizational sociologist, in which she has explored the dynamics of organizational change with particular reference to gender identities, to ageing and - linking both - to the intrasectionalities of digital technologies in everyday practice across diverse workplaces.
Susan has been a Visiting Professor at the Australian National University and Federico II, University of Naples. She has sat on various of strategic and advisory boards, most recently the EPSRC ICT Strategic Advisory Team, the UK Biobank Ethics Advisory Group and the ESRC New and Emerging Forms of Data Strategic Advisory Group. Susan was President of the British Sociological Association 2018-21.
Leslie Carr is a Professor of Web Science at the University of Southampton. A computer scientist by training, his work in Open Access and the EPrints Institutional Repositories platform led him to develop interdisciplinary perspectives on the role of information technologies such as the Web and AI in society. As a Director of the Web Science Institute and the AI@Southampton initiative at the University of Southampton, he works with researchers across disciplinary boundaries to establish a critical understanding of the capabilities of AI in scientific research and higher education practice. He is an Honorary Professor at the University of Bristol, where he works with the Centre for SocioDigital Futures to investigate the imagined and emerging futures of AI in UK research. Leslie is also a science communicator who specialises in standup comedy, performing shows explaining AI to audiences at the Edinburgh Fringe and venues around the South of England. He runs the University of Southampton's Comedy Academy, training staff and students to use comedy to explore their research with the public, and hosts a monthly Science Comedy event.
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