Drawing on data from a number of studies involving men in conversation, this book will explore how talk is used by men when navigating issues to do with gender and more specifically masculinity. The book explores how the gendered self is constructed from one situation to another and in relation to different kinds of influences within and through acts of speech.

The book is also about how talk is used and positioned with in qualitative research about the self and identity. It references a particular methodology that incorporates a number of methods designed to elicit self-talk. It makes a case for mixed methods approaches set against the continued preference for interview methods in social sciences research.

This book is currently in production and will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in the near future.

I am currently engaged in a three year project exploring food packaging design. I am specifically concerned with understanding how taste relates to food packaging design and consumer choice. I am utilising Bourdieu's work on distinction to position taste and aesthetics as being socially constructed and embedded within class structures. My eventual aim is to provide tools for graphic designers to better consider how their work may affect class relations and consumer identities.

This thesis explores men’s gender identities and sense of self. In particular, it focuses on the immediate, contextual and relational factors involved in how men construct identities and revise their self-narratives. The aim of this thesis is to argue that there are varied and contextually situated aspects of men’s identities and engagements with gender. The study builds on existing work on masculinities to better situate men’s agency and reflexivity within the field of critical masculinities studies by moving away from approaches that emphasise types, traits and categories. The thesis establishes a theoretical framework drawing on the concepts of self-reflexivity and affective practice to frame the dynamic and varied aspects of men’s identities and self-making. It provides empirical support and theoretical discussion towards a non-categorical approach to masculinities studies. This research utilises an original mixed methods approach drawn from image elicitation, mood boards and i-poems to elicit and isolate men’s self-talk. This was undertaken across four sessions and with a total of fourteen men. The findings of this thesis highlight three factors that underscore a dynamic and varied view of men’s identities and self-making. These factors will be referred to here as contextuality, negotiation and values. The thesis concludes by making a case for the need to adopt these factors when studying men, masculinities and identity. This thesis addresses a gap in existing knowledge by providing empirical support for a non-categorical approach to studying masculinities and men’s identities. In paving a way forward, I suggest that the concept of assemblages may be a helpful approach for the field.

The use of image elicitation methods has been recognised in qualitative research for some time; however, the use of mood boards to prompt participant discussion is currently an under-researched area. This article explores the use of mood boards as a data collection method in qualitative research. Used in design disciplines mood boards allow designers to interpret and communicate complex or abstract aspects of a design brief. In this study, I utilise mood boards as being part creative visual method and part image elicitation device. The use of mood boards is explained here in the context of a research project exploring masculinity and men’s reflexivity. In this article, I consider the benefits of utilising this method in researching reflexivity and gender before offering a critical appraisal of this method and inviting others to explore how mood boards might enhance research projects involving elicitation.

Metal magazines have been shown to play a significant role in communicating and shaping heavy metal culture. And, since the masculinist nature of heavy metal is perhaps its most discussed and agreed upon feature, scholars have argued that heavy metal magazines also reproduce masculine hegemony. Focussing on cover images from Kerrang! magazine, this study utilizes a mixed methods approach to examine how heavy metal masculinities are represented over an extended number of issues (from 1981 to 1995). Utilizing existing scholarship on heavy metal magazines and drawing on celebrity identification theory, I argue that many of the prevailing studies that discuss heavy metal masculinities are essentially flawed in their reliance upon particular traits. Instead I show the ways that media images can come to both reproduce and resist masculine gender norms in the context of heavy metal culture. By considering how representations are formed over an extended period and in relation to particular heavy metal icons, I show that certain arguments and assumptions about masculinity and male privilege in heavy metal culture are oversimplified.