Spark: A Book Review

Authors

Ashleigh Watson, Griffith UniversityFollow

Abstract

Spark, a social research novel by Patricia Leavy, innovatively explores the complexities of doing collaborative, complex research. The story follows Sociology Professor Peyton Wilde during a week-long research seminar in Iceland with, as her invitation reads, "some of the greatest thinkers of our time." With an intriguing setup, swift plotline and lively characters, Leavy reaches to the heart of key concerns in interdisciplinary and mixed-methods research. Such concerns are well-discussed in the wider scholarly literature; Leavy uniquely handles and examines these concerns in fiction in a way that will be valuable to teachers and students alike. Spark makes an impressive contribution to fiction-based inquiry.

Keywords

Arts-Based Research, Creativity, Methodological Design, Social Fiction, Sociological Fiction

Author Bio(s)

Dr. Ashleigh Watson is a Resident Adjunct Research Fellow with the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University, Australia. She is the Fiction Editor of The Sociological Review, and the creator and editor of So Fi Zine (https://sofizine.com/). Please direct correspondence to a.watson@griffith.edu.au.

Publication Date

5-12-2019

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2019.4050

Recommended APA Citation

Watson, A. (2019). Spark: A Book Review. The Qualitative Report, 24(5), 1052-1054. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2019.4050