BECOMING A PUBLIC PHILOSPOHER
Technical Skills for Public Philosophers

Doing Qualitative Research Phenomenologically

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Course Description and Learning Goals

Course Description: 

This course will offer a comprehensive introduction to the history, theory and practice of phenomenologically based qualitative research. Taking a concrete skills-based approach, participants will be guided though the process of:

  1. articulating a phenomenologically researchable question

  2. data collection design

  3. the data analysis towards generalizable results

  4. using phenomenological literature to further illuminate one’s results

  5. writing the final report

Concrete Learning Goals:

  • How to design and circumscribe a phenomenologically researchable qualitative research question.

  • How to perform phenomenologically informed data collection. (Maximally rich description) 

  • How to conduct phenomenologically informed data analysis. (Fuller explication of meaning)

  • How to meaningfully elucidate the results of ones research within the phenomenological philosophical and psychological research traditions.


James Morley, PhD, Instructor

James Morley is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at Ramapo College of New Jersey where he teaches psychopathology, phenomenological psychology, and social theory.   He is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, founding director Ramapo’s mindfulness center, and is the past president of the Society for Interdisciplinary Phenomenology. Morley’s publications and research interests are in the philosophical foundations of psychology as a human science and the application of phenomenological thought to research methodology and topics such as imagination, mental health, and Asian thought. He co-edited the text “Merleau-Ponty: Interiority and Exteriority” (SUNY Press, 1999) and, with James Phillips, a collection of essays in philosophical psychopathology titled “Imagination and its Pathologies” (MIT Press, 2003).  Published chapters and articles can be found in Academia.edu and ResearchGate.