books on research interviews

• © 2016

The Research Interview

Reflective Practice and Reflexivity in Research Processes

• Steve Mann 0

University of Warwick, UK

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

Front matter, interviews as reflective practice, qualitative interviews overview, interview context, research interviews: modes and types, managing interview interaction, dilemmas and parameters, beyond the individual, transcripts and analysis, representation, training and development, back matter.

Research and Qualitative Interviews brings into focus the decisions that the interviewer faces by taking a data-led approach in order to open up choices and decisions in the process of planning for, managing, analysing and representing interviews. The chapters concentrate on the real-time, moment-by-moment nature of interview management and interaction. A key feature of the book is the inclusion of reflexive vignettes that foreground the voices and experience of qualitative researchers (both novices and more expert practitioners). The vignettes demonstrate the importance of reflecting on and learning from interactional experience. In addition, the book provides an overview of different types of interviews, commenting on the orientation and make-up of each type. Overall, this book encourages reflective thinking about the use of research interviews. It distinguishes between reflection, reflective practice and reflexivity. All the chapters focus on recurring choices, dilemmas and puzzles; offering advice in opening out and engaging with these aspects of the research interview.

• Research interviewing
• research interview
• reflective practice
• Qualitative interview
• Qualitative interviewing
• Interview discourse analysis
• discourse analysis
• qualitative research
• research methods

“The research interview is a ubiquitous part of social science and humanities research.  Yet it continues to pose conceptual and analytic challenges to experienced researchers and students alike.  The clear-sighted theoretical and experiential accounts in this book provide us with invaluable compass points and guide ropes.” (Professor Constant Leung, King's College London, UK)

“Steve Mann has produced an outstanding, accessible resource on interviewing. A myriad of voices and experiences can be heard loud and clear in the excellent examples provided.  We are invited into the real-time of interview interactions as they are nurtured by participants engaged in conversation.  Readers will find important insights into the choices and decisions researchers make in the interviewing process.” (Professor Angela Creese, University of Birmingham, UK)

Book Title : The Research Interview

Book Subtitle : Reflective Practice and Reflexivity in Research Processes

Authors : Steve Mann

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137353368

Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan London

eBook Packages : Social Sciences , Social Sciences (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Hardcover ISBN : 978-1-137-35334-4 Published: 14 March 2016

Softcover ISBN : 978-1-137-35335-1 Published: 14 March 2016

eBook ISBN : 978-1-137-35336-8 Published: 29 April 2016

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XV, 325

Topics : Applied Linguistics , Language Education , Language Teaching

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How to Do Qualitative Interviewing

• Bethany Morgan Brett - University of Essex, Colchester, UK
• Katy Wheeler - University of Essex, UK
• Description

Whether you are new to interviewing and working toward an undergraduate dissertation or refining your fieldwork as you complete a research project, this book contains everything you need to know for successful qualitative interview data collection.

Organised around practical hints, reflexive tasks, bite-sized pieces of information and original case study material, the authors’ candid accounts of their research experiences help you approach qualitative interviewing with transparency, consistency and confidence.

It walks you through how to:

• Decide if interviews are the right tool for your project
• Turn your research ideas into well-phrased interview questions
• Navigate ethical review and informed consent 
• Recruit participants
• Choose an effective interview style
• Adapt your methods for different populations
• Transcribe and analyse your data.

See what’s new to this edition by selecting the Features tab on this page. Should you need additional information or have questions regarding the HEOA information provided for this title, including what is new to this edition, please email [email protected] . Please include your name, contact information, and the name of the title for which you would like more information. For information on the HEOA, please go to http://ed.gov/policy/highered/leg/hea08/index.html .

For assistance with your order: Please email us at [email protected] or connect with your SAGE representative.

SAGE 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, CA 91320 www.sagepub.com

This should be the go-to handbook for any qualitative researcher. A robust academic foundation is illuminated by intriguing and involving examples, allowing the reader to participate in rather than merely observe the research journey.

This remarkable book provides an outstanding guide to the complex art of interviewing. It dispels myths that interviews are an ‘easy’ or ‘natural’ process and takes readers on a step by step journey to vastly improving their skills. It is ideal for researchers and students alike.

This lively, engaging and comprehensive guide offers the research student exactly what they need to design an interview-based project. Combining practical advice with theoretical ideas, ethical debates and personal reflections, Morgan Brett and Wheeler take the reader on a rich, robust and rewarding journey. 

Very valuable foundational topics about qual interviewing covered in this book.

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Qualitative Interviewing

Professor of Psychology

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Qualitative interviewing has today become one of the most common research methods across the human and social sciences, but it is an approach that comes in different guises. This book will help its readers write, represent, understand, and critique qualitative interview research in its many forms as currently practiced. The book begins with a theoretically informed introduction to qualitative interviewing by presenting a variegated landscape of how conversations have been used for knowledge-producing purposes. Particular attention is paid to the complementary positions of experience-focused interviewing (phenomenological positions) and language-focused interviewing (discourse-oriented positions), which focus on interview talk as reports (of the experiences of interviewees) and accounts (occasioned by the situation of interviewing), respectively. The following chapters address various ways of designing qualitative interview studies and a guide to writing up the methodological procedures and results of an interview study. The book concludes with a presentation of the most common errors in interview reports, offering a range of solutions and strategies for evaluating research findings based on qualitative interviews.

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Doing Interview Research The Essential How To Guide

• Uwe Flick - Freie Universtität Berlin, Germany
• Description

If you want to use interview methods in your research project but are not sure where to start, this book will get you up and running. With hands-on advice for every stage of the social research process, it helps you succeed in every step, from understanding interview research through to designing and conducting your study and working with data.  The book:

• Discusses eight methods of interviewing in-depth, including semi-structured interviews, narrative interviews, focus groups and online interviews.
• Features over 75 case studies of real interview research from across the globe, including Australia, Canada, Germany, Norway, the Philippines and South Africa.
• Spotlights strategies for conducting ethical, inclusive research, including indigenous research approaches.

Packed not only with learning features - including learning objectives, checklists of questions to ask yourself at every stage of your project, practical exercises to help you put your learning into practice and further reading so you can broaden your knowledge - it is also supported by online resources such as annotated transcripts and videos of mock interviews to empower any social science student to use interview research methods with confidence.

Supplements

Instructor Resources (Log-in needed)

• A test bank of multiple choice questions for directed learning or assessment purposes.
• Downloadable PowerPoint slides that you can customise to suit your teaching needs.

Student Resources (Free to access)

• Case studies of interview research in the real world.
• Example annotated and coded interview transcripts from author Uwe Flick.
• Journal articles and book chapters showing you how interview research is done at each step of the process.
• Videos hand-picked by Uwe give you insight into different aspects of interview research
• Weblinks to helpful sites, guidelines, software and more.

This book is not just yet another manual about interview procedures. Rather, the strength of this excellent extended discussion is that the author not only knows about interviews in theory, but is also experienced in actually putting that theory into practice when conducting interviews. This makes for a book that is able to address how to do interviews in a thoughtful and responsible way, as the discussion is grounded in the theoretical, ethical, methodological and practical thinking that shapes how interviews are conducted.

A clear and practical guide to conducting research interviews for those inexperienced with qualitative methodologies and methods.

Doing Interview Research is a comprehensive, captivating guide for carrying out interviews. It has everything the social science postgraduate researcher requires to explore the expansive nature of qualitative inquiry. A very informative resource for both students and supervisors.

Uwe Flick tackles interviewing—a ubiquitous research method—in his exceptionally useful and user-friendly book. By ending each chapter with a recurring refrain—what you need to ask yourself, what you need to succeed, and what you learned—he invites readers to actively and reflexively engage with the material.

This book gives the reader an excellent introduction to interview research. It provides rationales for choosing interviews and discusses when to do interviews and why. It is a comprehensive and yet accessible book that includes the whole process, from designing interview research to conducting different types of interviews in different contexts, and to analyzing and reporting interview data. Throughout each step, Flick thoughtfully discusses epistemology, quality, critiques, and reflexivity, so the book offers the reader a theoretical approach at the same time as clear guidance on how to design and conduct interview research.

This is an excellent book, providing very rich insights on how to approach interviews in the context of qualitative research approaches. It is of great value for students, experienced researchers and teachers.

Useful information to support those students wishing to engage with this approach for their thesis and research projects- with this as their exclusive method in the study

Excellent book and there was a gap in the market for this. Many of my students want to undertake this type of research so thank you

An additional source for dissertation students who ma struggle with some of the Interview research concepts

Great for students about to embark on a dissertation using interviews. Enables students to grasp why interviews are an appropriate method.

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Oxford University Press's Academic Insights for the Thinking World

“Unparalleled research quality”: An interview with Tanya Laplante, Head of Product Platforms

Oxford Academic

• By Tanya Laplante
• April 24 th 2024

As part of our Publishing 101 blog series, we are interviewing “hidden” figures at Oxford University Press: colleagues who our authors would not typically work with but who make a crucial contribution to the success of their books.

Tanya explains how, as research behaviours have changed, we use digital platforms to ensure that our authors’ books reach readers worldwide.

What is your role at OUP?

I am Head of Product Platforms in the Academic Division of Oxford University Press. I oversee the strategic development for the platforms, such as Oxford Academic, that host our book and journal products and services.

What is the difference between the product and editorial departments at OUP?

While editorial focuses on individual works like books and journals, product is responsible for the overall success and health of OUP’s digital portfolio. Many departments contribute to our digital products and oversee various aspects of product creation and maintenance that are central to success: editorial, sales, marketing, data strategy, content operations, royalties, etc. Product’s role is to ensure that all of those aspects are working together in as seamless a way as possible to deliver high-quality, author-driven products to the people that read our content, namely researchers.

How did Oxford Academic become our home for academic books?

Research behaviours have changed over the past two decades, as we have steadily seen sales shift away from print towards online. Oxford Academic allows us to better connect the online version of our books into a wider aggregated library of content that is easily found on search engines like Google, which can dramatically enhance the reach and impact of our authors’ work. Digital dissemination allows us to put scholarship into the hands of researchers and learners worldwide who might never have access to a library print copy. 

Oxford Academic came out of a desire within the Press to create a single gateway into Academic’s content to streamline the research journeys of those searching for content in our books and journals. It launched with journals in 2017, with research books following in 2022. Digital-first publishing is a priority for OUP as it increases the discoverability and accessibility of our research, thereby magnifying its reach and impact for our authors.

What opportunities does Oxford Academic offer our authors?

Oxford Academic offers authors a modern, mobile-friendly, accessible, search engine optimized platform upon which to publish research. In practice, this means that it’s easier for researchers to find our authors’ work online. With journals and books on the same platform, reader journeys across the two formats are not only possible but can be informed by AI-driven recommendation widgets, so readers are recommended other relevant research.

Some of the key benefits for readers include being able to:

• Quickly find books, journals, and images by building powerful searches, or using our robust links to related content  
• Access content from their preferred device, and experience a modern platform with updated features and functionality  
• Understand research quickly with our graphical or video abstracts, non-textual outputs such as images, multimedia, data, and code, and text shown with tables or images side-by-side

Our Insight Working Group is constantly reviewing reader behaviors to recommend development that will drive the use of our books and journals content and, consequently, the impact of authors’ research.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

I enjoy working across departments with various stakeholders to find innovative platform solutions for customers, readers, and authors. It can be a challenge to narrow down the areas of the platform that we should invest in. But I, and the stakeholders I work with, have developed a great deal of expertise that informs where investment is best placed. We want to invest in areas that will have the greatest impact for the greatest number of people that use platforms such as Oxford Academic, including authors, customers, and society partners.

How do you see the digital publishing landscape evolving over the next few years?

New publishing models (Open Access) and technological changes (AI) are both impacting scholarly publishing. With the expansion of Open Access and a changing funder landscape, OUP needs to demonstrate the value of what we, as a non-profit publisher, bring to the research ecosystem. We need to better educate funders, authors, and customers about the critical role we play in the publishing process: overseeing peer review, managing distribution, application of metadata, maximizing discoverability on digital platforms, and more.

In terms of AI and other technological changes, we need to optimize the benefits while minimizing the risks. We are entering a period of great change in digital publication, from review to submission to publication and discoverability. The quality of the research we publish on behalf of authors is unparalleled. We need to harness that quality and use AI as a way to enrich the user experience and increase discoverability of the content, while ensuring we are still driving users to a trusted version of record on OUP’s platforms.

In both of these spaces, we will also need to consider unique services and capabilities we can provide for key stakeholders in this space, including authors, customers, and society partners. What can OUP bring to the table to make their role in the publication process a more seamless one?

Feature image by Marius Masalar , via Unsplash .

Tanya Laplante , Head of Product Platforms, Oxford University Press.

• Publishing 101
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How Riley Keough and Lily Gladstone brought humanity to true crime

The actresses star in hulu’s ‘under the bridge,’ a limited series about the brutal 1997 murder of canadian teenager reena virk.

Riley Keough wasn’t sure at first whether she wanted to star in a true-crime project. The genre relies on a grim fascination with horrific violence, and dramatizations risk doing the victims a disservice.

But in “ Under the Bridge ,” a new Hulu series about the 1997 murder of Indian Canadian teenager Reena Virk, Keough saw an opportunity to paint everyone involved as human beings — not just 14-year-old Reena and her family but, to an extent, the perpetrators as well. Why did a group of teenagers, some of whom had befriended Reena in previous months, beat her to the brink of death? And why did two of those teenagers, one of them a complete stranger to Reena, drown her in a river? Perhaps there was a societal benefit to trying to understand their motivations — and remorse, as became the case for that 16-year-old stranger.

“I’m always asking why. … What am I putting out in the world?” Keough said in a recent interview. She added that executive producers Quinn Shephard and Samir Mehta “were really open to having more complicated conversations about things that are usually looked at as very black and white.”

“Under the Bridge” draws from the 2005 nonfiction book by Rebecca Godfrey, a writer who investigated the crime that rocked her idyllic hometown of Victoria, British Columbia, and its surrounding area. The book is defined by its literary quality, turning years of research and interviews into a vivid exploration of what sparks senseless brutality. Though Godfrey doesn’t figure much into her own narrative, the series uses her investigation as a framing device. She is played by Keough, who also produced the show.

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Reena (Vritika Gupta) appears in flashbacks, depicted as a passionate and caring but lonely girl who rebels against her Jehovah’s Witness upbringing in a desperate effort to fit in. Through these flashbacks and Rebecca’s research, viewers encounter the girls Reena tried to befriend: Josephine Bell (Chloe Guidry), a tempestuous teenager living at a group home who starts her own gang; Dusty Pace (Aiyana Goodfellow), a kinder kid with a troubled past who also lives at the group home; and Kelly Ellard (Izzy G.), Josephine’s cruel, well-to-do friend. After the incident, Rebecca also strikes up an acquaintance with Warren Glowatski (Javon Walton), a boy who runs in similar circles and lives alone in his estranged father’s trailer.

Keough’s involvement in the series piqued the interest of another true-crime skeptic: Lily Gladstone , who was fresh off shooting “ Killers of the Flower Moon ” — the Martin Scorsese film about a slew of murders afflicting the Osage Nation in the 1920s, for which Gladstone would later receive an Oscar nomination — and hesitated to embark on another foray into the genre. Gladstone had befriended Keough on social media years before she was pitched the fictional role of Cam Bentland, a police officer who pushes the local precinct to investigate Reena’s sudden disappearance.

“[Keough] was amplifying some of the posts I would be making about missing murdered Indigenous relatives or Savanna’s Act ,” said Gladstone, who has Blackfeet and Nez Percé heritage. “She cared about a lot of the same things I did, … so knowing that she was coming on both as an actor and as a producer, I was like: ‘Okay, she believes in the character, and she believes in the project. I’ll take the meeting.’”

In a way, Cam mirrors Reena. Her experience as the sole Indigenous member of the police department recalls some of the discrimination the Virks face in their very White town, where Reena is bullied by peers who pretend to be her friends. Cam frequently argues with her White father, the police chief who adopted her as a child, just as Reena clashes with her parents over cultural differences. (Per Gladstone’s request to incorporate local history, Cam discovers that she was taken from her Indigenous community as part of the Sixties Scoop , a decades-long period of targeted policies that enabled Canadian child welfare authorities to forcibly “scoop up” Indigenous children so they could be adopted by White families.)

Gladstone was reassured by the fact that Shephard and Mehta had optioned a memoir written by Reena’s father, Manjit Virk, to better empathize with and depict the family. “That gave me a lot of faith, because coming off ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ part of what made that so successful — particularly the adaptation of an Osage perspective through it — was community involvement,” Gladstone said. She was also encouraged by Shephard’s commitment to exploring the concept of restorative justice.

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In real life, after the group of teenagers beat and abandoned Reena, Ellard and Glowatski followed her. They continued the assault and drowned her, and they both were convicted of second-degree murder. Reena’s parents, Manjit and Suman Virk, eventually forgave Glowatski, who had been a stranger to their daughter. Suman described him upon his 2007 release on day parole as “a young man who has taken responsibility for his actions and is trying to amend the wrong that he did.” In the show, Suman (Archie Panjabi) asks Rebecca to take her to meet Warren before he begins serving his sentence.

Cam and Rebecca, old friends in this fictional rendering of events, come to blows over Rebecca’s desire to humanize the teenage suspects through her writing — particularly Warren, who seems to remind Rebecca of her late brother, who accidentally drowned when he was 16 years old (a tragic detail pulled from Godfrey’s real life). “A lot of her journey is a personal exploration of her own feelings and emotions, … and I think sometimes that can come across as a bit selfish,” Keough said. It was a challenging role to inhabit, but one the actress considered to be “about honoring [Rebecca] and her grief.”

Keough never spoke to Godfrey, who died of lung cancer in late 2022, before “Under the Bridge” began filming. (The author is listed as an executive producer for the three years she spent developing the series with Shephard.) The series paints the fictional Rebecca as conflicted — determined to understand why the teenagers committed such brutality, while also grappling with “a sense of guilt,” per Keough, over her desire to do so. The actress theorized that it might be easier for some to extend grace to children.

“Two things can be true: Something can be horrific, and also a mistake,” Keough said. “It’s a gray area that I’m always thinking about, … and I like putting that out there for others to consider.”

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Books Bound in Human Skin: An Ethical Quandary at the Library

Harvard’s recent decision to remove the binding of a notorious volume in its library has thrown fresh light on a shadowy corner of the rare book world.

By Jennifer Schuessler and Julia Jacobs

The New York International Antiquarian Book Fair is the place to inspect some of the most exquisite rare books on the market. But at this year’s event in early April, some browsers may have been unprepared for a small, grayish item on view: a book bound in human skin.

The book, which measures about 3 by 5 inches, came with a price tag of $45,000 — and a colorful back story. According to a statement by its owner, the binding was commissioned in 1682 by an Italian doctor and anatomist identified as Jacopo X, and has been kept by his descendants ever since.

Family lore held that during a dissection, Jacopo recognized the woman on the slab as an actress he had seen in Corneille’s comedy “Le Baron d’Albikrac.” He knew that unclaimed bodies sold to medical schools for dissection were rarely, if ever, given a proper burial. So he removed a piece of skin, and used it to bind a copy of the play.

“There was a sense that this was a tribute,” Ian Kahn, a dealer, explained to onlookers gathered at the counter of his booth before pulling out the book to offer a closer look.

Books bound in human skin — and the sometimes sensational stories surrounding them — have long occupied an odd place in the annals of the rare book world. Over the years, they have been whispered, bragged and joked about.

But over the past decade, the conversation has shifted. Many institutions whose collections include these books have sharply restricted access, as they have found themselves unexpectedly embroiled in the same debates about displaying — or even owning — human remains that have swept across museums .

The conversation was jolted anew last month when Harvard University announced that it had removed the skin binding from a notorious book in its collections, and that it would be seeking “a final, respectful disposition.” The university also apologized for “past failures in its stewardship,” which it said had “further objectified and compromised the dignity of the human being whose remains were used” for the binding.

The announcement drew headlines around the world. But so far, the reaction from rare book experts has been muted — and mixed.

“It was a bold move to put out a press release not just about the presence of human skin books, but about a potentially controversial way of dealing with the issue,” said Allie Alvis, a curator at the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library in Delaware. Too many institutions, Alvis says, are unwilling to say much about them at all.

But others are troubled by what they see as the destruction of a historical artifact, and the imposition of 21st-century sensibilities onto objects from different times and contexts.

Megan Rosenbloom, a former medical librarian and the author of “Dark Archives,” a study of the history and science of anthropodermic (or skin-bound) books, said that destroying or disposing of these objects would close off future scholarship and fresh understandings.

“We should treat these books as respectfully as possible, but try not to bury literally and figuratively what happened to these people,” she said. “It’s hubris to think we’ve come to the end of our evolution of how we think about human remains.”

And moves like Harvard’s, Rosenbloom added, could backfire.

“If all anthropodermic books are taken out of institutions,” she said, “the rest of these books on the private market will probably go further underground, where they might be treated less respectfully.”

Rumors and Innuendo

Claims of books bound in human skin have circulated for centuries. But the ability to confirm them scientifically — using a technique called peptide mass fingerprinting — is only about a decade old.

In 2015, Rosenbloom and others started the Anthropodermic Book Project , with the goal of uncovering “the historical truths behind the innuendo.” So far, the project has identified 51 purported examples worldwide, 18 of which have been confirmed as bound in human skin. Another 14 have been debunked.

An unknown number of others sit in private libraries. Kahn, whose firm, Lux Mentis , handles a lot of “challenging material,” as he put it, said he knows of several collectors in Paris who have skin-bound books.

The oldest reputed examples are three 13th-century Bibles held at the Bibliothèque Nationale in France. The largest number date from the Victorian era, the heyday of anatomical collecting , when doctors sometimes had medical treatises and other texts bound in skin from patients or cadavers.

Other examples relate to criminals or prisoners. At the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in Scotland, a display about the 19th-century growth of the medical profession includes a small notebook purportedly bound in the skin of William Burke, part of a duo of notorious serial killers who sold their victims’ bodies for dissection. The Boston Athenaeum owns one bound in the skin of a man who, before he died in prison , had asked that two copies of his memoir and deathbed confession be bound in his skin.

While most known skin bindings are from Europe or North America, some involve wild claims, like a book at the Newberry Library in Chicago said to have been “found in the palace of the King of Delhi” during the 1857 mutiny against British rule. (Lab examination, according to the library, concluded it was actually “highly burnished goat.” )

“There’s often a sense of othering of these books,” said Alvis, the curator of Winterthur Museum, who posts about rare books on social media as @book_historia. “They don’t come from the noble white person, but this strange person from foreign climes.”

Current testing cannot identify race or sex of the skin. But at least a half-dozen 19th-century examples involve skin purportedly taken from female patients or cadavers by male doctors, with several used to cover books about female biology or sexuality (like a treatise on virginity held at the Wellcome Collection in London).

And a few examples, both rumored and confirmed, have racial connections that, whatever the intentions behind the bindings, may play uncomfortably today.

Two volumes of poems by Phillis Wheatley , the first person of African descent to publish a book in the United States, have been confirmed as bound in human skin. But a pocket-size notebook at the Wellcome Collection, long claimed to have been bound in the skin of Crispus Attucks, a mixed-race Black and Native man recognized as the first person to die for American independence, is likely bound in camel, horse or goat skin, according to the museum.

A ‘Violated Woman’?

The volume at Harvard, an 1879 philosophical treatise called “Des Destinées de L’Ame,” or “The Destiny of Souls,” was bound by a French doctor named Ludovic Bouland, who inserted a note saying that “a book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering.” It was placed at Harvard’s Houghton Library in 1934 by John Stetson, an heir to the hat fortune, along with another note saying that the skin came from a woman who died in a psychiatric hospital.

According to Harvard, library lore holds that “decades ago” the book was sometimes used to haze unsuspecting student workers. But questions about the library’s recent stewardship emerged in 2014, after the library published a jokey blog post describing the confirmation of the skin binding as “good news for cannibals.”

Paul Needham, a prominent rare book expert who retired from Princeton in 2020, was deeply offended, and began calling on Harvard to remove the skin and give it a “respectful burial.”

“I think that the way the Houghton Library treated this was a disservice to the world of rare book collecting,” he said.

The library imposed some restrictions on access in 2015. Winds shifted further in 2021, when Harvard formed a Steering Committee on Human Remains to examine all of its collections, as an outgrowth of its efforts to reckon with its historic entanglements with slavery.

A single skin-bound book from 19th-century France may seem like a small thing amid the more than 20,000 human remains in Harvard’s collections, including 6,500 from Native Americans, which critics say are not being researched and repatriated quickly enough.

But to Needham, who was involved in starting an affinity group to pressure Harvard into burying the skin of what the group called “the violated woman trapped in the binding,” the moral imperative is clear: The proper disposition of human remains should take ethical precedence, particularly where the person has not given consent.

“What 100 years from now would be the potential new research that would be done?” Needham said. “I just can’t imagine it.”

Harvard’s decision is drawing heightened attention to skin-bound volumes elsewhere, including one at the Cleveland Public Library: an 1867 edition of the Quran, acquired in 1941 from a dealer who had described it as “formerly the property of the East Arab chief Bushiri ibn Salim who revolted against the Germans in 1888.”

For decades, the book typically received a handful of requests a year for access, said John Skrtic, the library’s chief of collections. But earlier this year, the library made it off-limits, pending testing.

“The library has long believed the undocumented claim in the dealer’s catalog, regarding its binding, to be false and finds the claim sensationalistic and deeply offensive,” the Cleveland Public Library said in a statement. The library will “engage leaders in the local Muslim community to chart an ethical path forward.”

Harvard’s approach is also generating strong criticism. Eric Holzenberg, a book scholar who recently retired as director of the Grolier Club in Manhattan, said that the destruction of the binding “accomplishes nothing,” beyond expressing disapproval of “the acts of people long dead.”

“Harvard, it seems to me, has taken the easy way out,” Holzenberg said. “No doubt the proper, cautious, committee-generated, risk-averse approach, but ultimately I fear at the expense of sound scholarship and responsible stewardship.”

Rosenbloom, the author of “Dark Archives,” said she questioned the tendency to pull these objects, which were generally not created or collected in a context of colonialism, into models developed to address those injustices. And she wondered why Harvard had removed the binding before finishing full provenance research.

In response to emailed questions, Thomas Hyry, the director of Houghton Library, and Anne-Marie Eze, its associate librarian, said they did not believe dismantling of the binding would limit future scholarship.

“The decisions we have made to remove the human remains from our volume will not erase what we know about this practice for those studying the history of the book,” they said.

Balancing Research and Respect

Some libraries that have undertaken an ethical review of their anthropodermic books have reached different conclusions.

Brown University’s John Hay Library has four books confirmed as bound in human skin, including an edition of Vesalius’s landmark 1543 anatomical atlas, “On the Structure of the Human Body.” In the past, they were promoted on campus tours and sometimes brought out for Halloween and other events.

But in 2019, the library’s new director, Amanda Strauss, paused any showing of the books, while developing policies that balanced respect for human remains with the library’s research mandate.

“We don’t want to censor access to controversial or disturbing material,” she said. “And we don’t want to shame anyone for their interest.”

Today, images of the books’ pages (but not the bindings) are available online , while access to the physical books is limited to people conducting research on medical ethics or anthropodermic bindings.

Strauss said she would be uncomfortable with any alteration or destruction of the bindings, which she said amounted to “erasure.”

“We can’t pretend this wasn’t a practice and this didn’t happen,” she said. “Because it did, and we have the evidence.”

With any macabre object, the line between morbid curiosity and the pursuit of understanding may be hard to draw.

Kahn, the dealer, said he wanted to “demystify” books bound in skin, which he said can prompt conversations about ethics, knowledge and our own status as animals. At the book fair, many seemed open to those questions and curious, however queasily, to touch the Corneille volume.

One browser, Helen Lukievics, a retired lawyer, said she had read about the Harvard book and shuddered. But she was persuaded, she said, by the idea that this particular binding had been meant as a “tribute” to the actress.

“It’s fabulously appalling,” she said. She paused. “It’s a piece of history.”

Jennifer Schuessler is a culture reporter covering intellectual life and the world of ideas. She is based in New York. More about Jennifer Schuessler

Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times. More about Julia Jacobs

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Author Interviews

Emily henry on 'embarrassing, giddy, freefall' of writing, reading and being in love.

Elena Burnett

William Troop

Juana Summers

NPR's Juana Summers speaks with Emily Henry about her new book FUNNY STORY and the difficulty of writing a genuinely nice person while also creating obstacles in getting two people together.

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

Picture this - you have the dream job, a dream home and are planning a dream wedding with the love of your life. And then said love of your life realizes they are in love with someone else. That is the exact nightmare scenario children's librarian Daphne Vincent finds herself in at the start of Emily Henry's new book, "Funny Story." Daphne's fiance Peter breaks up with her for his childhood best friend, and her plans are thrown into chaos. All this leads Daphne to move in with Miles, a guy who knows all too well what Daphne is going through, since the childhood friend who ran off with Peter is Miles' now ex-girlfriend, Petra. It's a premise that Henry wondered about after writing about a best friendship turn more in a different novel.

EMILY HENRY: Every time I kind of investigate one kind of trope or story line, I'm always curious, like, ooh, what happens to, you know, the rest of the cast? What about the woman who just got dumped? She's not the star of this rom-com, and I wanted to make her the star.

SUMMERS: I asked Henry what shades of Daphne she saw in herself.

HENRY: That feeling of not being enough is a real common fear for so many people, and especially in romantic relationships, you know, you can just feel like there's just this whole world that you should be, like, providing to this person. And you're aware of everyone else around you and how they interact with this person that means the world to you. And I think that that fear of, like - I'm not enough - is just a really pressing thing that gets kind of triggered in romantic relationships especially.

SUMMERS: I now want to talk about Miles, who is just this kind, warm, comforting person. He's tattooed. He wears Crocs. I am curious - when you're writing romance books where a lot of the tension comes from the obstacles that come when it comes to getting two people together, how hard is it to write a character who is just so genuinely kind and warm?

HENRY: This is the exact battle that this whole book was - to realize these two people really like each other, and they're really connecting. And he's kind, and he's emotionally available, and he's present. And so I had to really dig deep into kind of their histories and their traumas and figure out which things about themselves would sort of trip each other up, if that makes sense. You know, I think when you meet someone and you really click, there's all these facets of your personality that just complement each other, and that's a really exciting feeling. But of course, they're always also going to be things that really grate against each other. And for Daphne, this person who has, you know, kind of built her life on needing to have this sense of control and order, it's a real challenge to start falling for someone who's sort of the total opposite of that.

SUMMERS: I spend more time than I should probably admit on the radio on TikTok, specifically BookTok, and reading reviews, and something that I watched or read somewhere suggested that you happen to be very good at writing male characters, men who have gone to therapy and worked on themselves.

HENRY: Yes (laughter).

SUMMERS: How do you feel about that?

HENRY: I mean, I'm passionate about that. I'm passionate about men going to therapy.

SUMMERS: Me too.

HENRY: I mean, I'm passionate about everyone going to therapy. But, yeah, I mean, if you're a really introspective person and have really great friends and all of that, that can go a really long way. But, you know, if you want to have a sustained relationship that goes through all of these different phases of life and that really challenges all of your own hang-ups and triggers and all of that - I don't know. A lot of us need help. I need help, and I think it's always beneficial to a relationship to have an outside source you can lean on.

SUMMERS: One of the things that really stands out, not just in this book but also in your other books, is the fact that there is this quick-witted, fun, kind of steamy banter between characters, and it is certainly there all throughout with Daphne and Miles. Their voices, their chemistry, the intense attraction between them just jumps off the page. I guess I wonder - when you're writing, do you hear their voices in your head kind of having this back-and-forth, or how do you capture that?

HENRY: Definitely. I mean, in the best case scenario, that is what's happening. And I'll admit that sometimes the earlier drafts are not that, and it's just sort of writing filler dialogue and cranking out beats to a specific plot that I've decided. But I think the magic moment for any writer is when you feel those characters just take over. And I feel like I was really lucky with this one that while there were a lot of challenges, the dialogue was really there from the beginning. The dynamic was there. I understood that he was sort of the softer, sunnier one, and she was, you know, a little bit sharper edged. And I just loved the feeling of bouncing between their voices.

SUMMERS: I think one of the things that is so fun, whether it's in a book or in real life, about being in love is that you lose yourself in it. You have those little cringeworthy moments where you smack yourself in the head and you're like, oh, my gosh, I cannot believe I am saying this right now.

HENRY: Yes.

SUMMERS: How do you think about writing those kinds of scenes that feel almost unbelievable, but yet they're so relatable for us?

HENRY: I do think that writing romance and reading romance and falling in love all feel very similar for that exact reason. It's this kind of embarrassing, giddy freefall. And if you're - you know, it's so easy to judge yourself, to have this sort of out-of-body experience where you're replaying every conversation and smacking yourself on the head and feeling humiliated. But that's also the joy of it. It's, like, just the most vulnerable thing a person can do.

And as hard as vulnerability is, I think it's beautiful because it's the only thing that can ever lead to true intimacy and to truly being known. And so, you know, I think it's good for us. I think it's good for us to engage with stories like this where we kind of see raw vulnerability on display and the cringe that you're talking about. It's like you kind of have to learn to roll with those punches and enjoy it. And later, you know, like, in real life, when you have those things happen, later, it is a funny story.

SUMMERS: I'm also curious about your personal philosophy on love. Where does that come from?

HENRY: I mean, I got very lucky with my parents, I would say. They have been married since they were 17 and 19. They're in their late 60s now. So from the very beginning of my life, I had this view of what love was, and it was, you know, patient and kind. And they can bicker with each other, but there's always an apology. Like, there's just no pride in themselves. There's no ego getting in the way. And their partnership is just so beautiful. And, you know, I've gotten to now watch it grow and change for over 30 years. And it's just such a special thing to see two people who really got to grow up together and go through all these different seasons of life and be a witness to the other's experience.

SUMMERS: It's an incredible story. There was something that I read on your substack a few weeks back, and it was about how you think about the reader as you write your books. You wrote that traditionally, authors try to forget about their readers when they're writing. And you said that recently, we've been a little bit more present in your mind. What has that done to your writing process?

HENRY: Oh, I honestly think it's made me a better writer. I think, you know, it can slow things down. It can make me a lot more nervous. With "Funny Story," specifically, I remember telling my editor that I spent the whole editing process telling myself, you've done this before. You can do it again. There's no need to worry. It all works itself out in the end. And then the last couple of months were just sheer panic. And so we decided next time, we're going to panic a little bit throughout instead of at the end. But I do feel this - you know, this pressure and this responsibility because I see it as my readers having given me this amazing gift in being able to do the work that really means the world to me. And I want to show that I appreciate that. I want them to feel like they are part of the journey.

SUMMERS: That is author Emily Henry. Her new book, "Funny Story," is out now. Emily, thank you so much.

HENRY: Thank you so much. This really was a joy.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

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Interviewing as Qualitative Research: A Guide for Researchers in Education and the Social Sciences 5th Edition

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This popular text, now in its fifth edition, provides step-by-step guidance for new and experienced researchers who want to use interviewing as a research method. This user-friendly guide explains the rationale for interviewing and the complexity of selecting interview participants, important interviewing techniques, and how to work with the results of interviews. Appropriate for individual and classroom use, this expanded edition includes: a revised assessment of the utility of Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis systems; contributions by Julie Simpson, the Director of Research Integrity Services at the University of New Hampshire, about preparing research for local Institutional Review Boards; and guidance for obtaining informed consent when using technology to interview, when interviewing abroad, and when hoping to include children as participants.

Book Features:

• Principles and methods that can be adapted to a range of interviewing approaches.
• A clear and inviting presentation appropriate for both individual use and for classes.
• Ideas to help readers analyze and improve their own approach, as well as suggestions for group practice.
• An interviewing technique that stresses listening, with guidance for avoiding leading questions.
• Examples of doctorial students’ research demonstrating that interviewing can deal with life and death issues, as well as everyday life.
• Updated references to help readers deepen their understanding of interviewing as qualitative research.
• ISBN-10 0807761486
• ISBN-13 978-0807761489
• Edition 5th
• Publisher Teachers College Press
• Publication date May 31, 2019
• Language English
• Dimensions 6.1 x 0.5 x 8.9 inches
• Print length 208 pages
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“For four editions, readers have turned to Interviewing as Qualitative Research for its practical and straight-forward presentation of a powerful interviewing model. With updated examples, new sections on ethics, and much more, this new edition remains a must-read for any graduate student or experienced researcher interested in the art of qualitative interviewing.” ― Nancy Dana , University of Florida

Praise for Previous Editions!

“A comprehensive perspective of the nature of qualitative inquiry and the art of interviewing.” ― Theory and Research in Social Education

“A good starting point for training new researchers.” ― The Journal of Higher Education

"I found Seidman’s guide coherent and relevant to its area of contribution and I look forward to consulting this text in the future not only in my work but also when teaching qualitative research methods." ―Qualitative Research

"Seidman fulfills the book's stated purpose of providing a practical guide for graduate students and early career scholars who are interested in interview research...His writing is clear and concise, avoiding jargon and unnecessarily complex concepts " ― The Journal of Educational Research

About the Author

Irving Seidman is professor emeritus at the College of Education, University of Massachusetts Amherst. He offers workshops and short courses and communicates with individual researchers who have questions about the methods described in this book.

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Teachers College Press; 5th edition (May 31, 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 208 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0807761486
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0807761489
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.7 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.1 x 0.5 x 8.9 inches
• #60 in Popular Psychology Research
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• #147 in Social Sciences Research

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