Al-Amn Magazine

DOCUMENTARY B Us i ng a document ary to communi cate soci a l research A fi lm can humani se your research and make i t access i b l e to an aud i ence beyond your fie l d ehind every piece of research – every data point, every graph – and every need for research is a person. Being able to tell the story of that person or hear directly from them brings your research to life. It humanises it, it makes it accessible, and it enables you, as researchers, to reach audiences you otherwise wouldn’t.” This is documentary-maker Catherine McDonald explaining why film has such an immediate impact on its viewers. In my experience, too, it has proved to be an excellent way to reach out, convey social research and engage people. The 20-minute documentary, The Sociologist’s Wife, has been viewed thousands of times in the eight months since it was first posted on YouTube. The film tells the story of three women who were married to eminent British sociologists at a time when the discipline was providing insight into post-war society. It uncovers the hidden ways each wife contributed to her husband’s work. Alongside comment from myself and co-researcher Val Gillies (a professor of social policy at the University of Westminster), the film features interviews with the adult children of each of the wives. Here are key takeaways from the experience. 1. Build in funding to produce a documentary film from the start We stumbled into documentary as a vehicle for telling the world about our research project. Our original idea, costed into our successful research funding application, was for a three-minute video of still images and a voice-over. However, a communications contact convinced us that a documentary film would be a better, more exciting